


Bakemono

by greenkangaroo



Category: Naruto
Genre: Body Horror, F/F, F/M, Gen, Gore, Growing Up, M/M, Monsters, human eating, monster/human relations, people get eaten
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-17
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2018-09-25 01:16:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 24
Words: 21,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9795872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenkangaroo/pseuds/greenkangaroo
Summary: Hashirama Senju thought it would be cool if a Triad of monsters helped him build a hidden village. The Monster Trio AU, where Ino-Shika-Cho is made up of vampires, wraithlike mind-eaters, and literal man eating ogres. But it's cool. They're ninja too.





	1. Introduction: What the hell is this about, anyway?

The Monster Trio AU posits that the Nara, Yamanaka, and Akimichi Clans were started by and are predominantly populated with monsters. 

**The Monsters:**

**Nara: Shiki** \- a bastardization of vampires mixing together a bunch of different lores. Consume blood. 

**Yamanaka: Yurei** \- The Yamanaka are actually a mix of two different Japanese monsters, the Baku (a chimeralike creature that eats dreams) and the Yurei, a vengeful female spirit- think Sadako from Ringu or Kayoko from Ju-On. For simplicity's sake, they are referred to as Yurei. They consume mental/spiritual energy, and in a pinch and for various cultural reasons, human hair. 

**Akimichi- Oni** \- Ogres, which populate a lot of Japanese mythology and have widely differing characteristics depending on the story. The Akimichi are man-eaters. What the Nara and the Yamanaka leave, they clean up. 

**Are all members of the Clans monsters?** No. The Old Blood clan members- direct descendants, the Clan Heads and their immediate families, some cousins- are monsters. The monstrous characteristics thin out the further you get from the main bloodline and all three clans have members who are mostly if not fully human. 

**Whose idea was it to invite man eaters to Konoha?** Hashirama. Madara couldn't talk him out of it and then it turned out the Akimichi weren't bad guys when they weren't trying to bite your throat out and the Nara were super useful when they weren't trying to break into your house and the Yamanaka were great conversationalists when they weren't phasing through walls or crawling on ceilings. 

**Are there other monsters in this world?** Now now, dearie. Spoilers. 

**Are these shorts all connected?** I can't promise that. I have a serious case of writing ADD going on. Ships, history, it's all up in the air. Some events are unchangeable (kicks dust over Asuma's gravestone) but others are fluid. 

That seems to be all you need to know for now. If you have questions, concerns, love notes, bribes, or prompts, leave me a comment or come find me on tumblr- greenekangaroo. 

Now then. Let's have a monster mash.


	2. Snags

On the edge of a secluded village in the Country of Clouds, a tall thickly built man with long hair was standing underneath a tree. 

This wouldn’t have been odd, save that it was nearing midnight, and the man was talking in the general direction of the tree as though he expected it to answer. 

“We’ve got a problem.” He said. 

“I don’t like problems, Chouji.” Ino informed her team mate from her position in a tree branch above his head. Shikamaru, hidden in the deeper shadows of the trunk, looked pensive. 

“Yeah well neither do I. Target’s put a wrench in it. Old timer’s a real old timer, Ino.” Chouji said, sounding apologetic. “He’s got an amulet.” 

“A- a what?!” Ino asked, affronted. 

“Straight up no bullshit anti-possession amulet. I haven’t seen one that old since the last time we went snooping through the Yamanaka archives. It’s probably a family heirloom.” 

“Explains why you couldn’t make contact yesterday.” Shikamaru murmured. Ino huffed and crossed her arms. “Well I never.” She muttered. “No one even knows those exist anymore.” 

“The target does.” Chouji said amicably. “And as long as he’s wearing it you can’t touch him.” 

“Oh I’ll touch him alright.” Ino growled, eyes glowing softly blue. It would have been beautiful, if not for the strange way her hair was starting to move, or the fact that she wasn’t sitting on her chosen tree branch but rather floating above it. 

“Careful, Ino.” Shikamaru said evenly. “Your yurei is showing.” 

“I’ll show my yurei all over this backwater.” Ino grumbled. “Or I would if it wouldn’t cause some international incident. Okay, Shikamaru. What do we do?” 

“Chouji can’t take it.” Shikamaru said. “He’s a known face and breaking the rules of hospitality might mess up his genjutsu. If the target has an anti-possession amulet we have to assume that he either believes in yurei or has a healthy dose of spiritual awareness so you’re out, too.” 

“Formation G?” Ino asked. 

“Formation G.” Shikamaru confirmed. “You okay with that, Chouji?” 

“Whatever gets us out of here fastest.” Chouji said. “I think those kappa hands our peddler was swinging around might have been a cousin of mine.” 

“And they call us monsters. Well, this is a feeding mission.” Ino said. “How many people are in this village?” 

“Forty.” Shikamaru said. “Too many to cover up without it being a total drag and our target’s not in his prime. Trust Asuma to give us a feeding mission with awful food.” 

“Hey don’t blame Asuma.” Chouji said. 

“I can and I will. This is troublesome.” Shikamaru oozed around the tree trunk and gazed down at Chouji. In the dark his red-on-black eyes shined like a cat's. “Ready?” 

“Ready.” Chouji said, and Shikamaru dropped from the tree, falling headfirst- into Chouji’s shadow, cast by the watery crescent of the moon. 

A glance up and Ino was gone, already floating up into the thicker branches and waiting for the signal that would usher her into their target’s mind. 

“You know,” Chouji said to the ground, “the target’s a dried up piece of leather, but his son’s looking pretty good.” 

There was a ripple in his shadow, a barely-there shudder that was echoed by Ino’s soft laughter. 

Chouji returned to the small inn, and at the doorway the owner- a peddler of the strange, unusual, and medicinal- said, “Longest piss on record.” 

“Sometimes a man’s gotta think about it.” Chouji said with a wide and reassuring grin. “Mind if I come in?” 

“You’re paying aren’t you? Get in, it’s dark.” The peddler said, and with that same grin still in place- though perhaps just a tad toothier- Chouji and his shadow crossed the threshold.


	3. Dollface

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chouji just looked like a guy you could trust.

When it came to the day-to-day missions, Chouji was their Face. 

Of course sometimes an assignment required Shikamaru’s smooth finesse, and one couldn’t deny Ino’s magnetic pull on just about anyone; but when you needed a cheerful infiltration, a part-time gardener or a construction hand, a travelling calligrapher or merchant or fisherman, Chouji was your man. No one ever suspected Chouji. 

Chouji, of the three of them, appeared the most natural without trying. The sharp claw-nails and slightly pointed ears could be explained away but only a family genjutsu could give Shikamaru white sclera and black pupils, doing away with his natural red-on-black. When her emotions ran high Ino still had problems keeping her feet on the ground and her hair in a ponytail despite years of training with weights wrapped around her ankles and some of the best hair products money could buy.

It wasn’t just because Chouji was skilled, although he was and his team mates were quick to remind others of that. It was, quite simply, because in order to survive and unlike their partnered clans the Akimichi required camouflage.

Hard to kill and eat a human when you couldn’t get near them, after all. 

Clan tradition had it- and none would argue- that the Nara and the Yamanaka who began the triad met their Akimichi on a lonely moon-lit road through the mountains. Both had been hungry and alone. Taking on a caravan was out of the question. One traveller? Easy. 

How that particular fight had ended wasn’t recorded, but as Ino had pointed out in their lessons, “It probably hurt. A lot.” 

Shikamaru could understand how his ancestor made the mistake. Akimichi genjutsus were not so much cast as they were inherent, biological in a way no one, not even Orochimaru, could claim to understand. To observer both ninja and citizen there was nothing strange about Chouji at all. 

Any trained dojutsu user could observe the truth in the younger members of the clan but even Madara Uchiha had been hard-pressed to see past Akimichi Chouga’s facade in the years of Konoha’s founding. 

Shikamaru could, of course. 

So could Ino. 

And though neither would admit it they lived for the moments when due to circumstance or order Chouji neatly tucked his Face away. 

When the skin folds beneath his spiral seals allowed him to open his sharp-toothed mouth to its full and terrible maw, when his fingers became daggers and his skin went hard as a diamond. 

They lived for the sight of his horns, amber red ram spirals curled up like his father’s, the impact of which could shatter rock and bone. 

Chouji was their Face, because it was hard not to trust Chouji. 

He’d seem so kind, so gentle. Slow to anger, quick to laugh, like every Akimichi before him. 

So ready to offer you a hand and a smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do not meddle in the affairs of the Akimichi, for you are crunchy and go good with soy sauce.


	4. Where Shadows Lie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Have some introspective Shikamaru with a side of worldbuilding!

The name of the first Nara to stretch their shadow across the ground was long lost to history. 

The clan didn’t have a lot of records before the beginning of the Triad, and why would they? When your nests were constantly being raided and set aflame, your clanmates staked and buried and left to burn in the unforgiving sun, there were some things you just didn’t have any goddamn time for. 

Things changed a little, when the Nara joined the Yamanaka and the Akimichi. Suddenly, there were people who would watch their nests while they slept. There were slender men and women who could walk through walls to sound the alarm, and warriors big as mountains to keep determined mobs at bay. 

The thing that changed the most, though, were the shadows. 

This story is true, as far as Shikamaru knows it:

When Nara Shikadan was outnumbered and left at the bottom of a ravine with no cover, both legs broken and facing a quicker death by sunlight than starving, Akimichi Chokiko had come. 

She’d pulled herself from the blessed pillars their shared enemy had used to entrap her, dragged herself to the ravine’s edge, and dropped like a stone to the bottom. 

She had crawled to Shikadan and as the sun began its slow and terrible climb she crouched over him, braced her elbows above his shoulders, rested her horns in the rock just above his head, and there she stayed. 

In her shadow, he was safe. With her bulk, he survived. 

There was some debate at this point in the tale on which Yamanaka came to them, some eighteen hours later. Was it Inoma or his twin sister Inorai? Did they bring Chokiko’s older sister Chohana, or was it their father, Chosun? Did Shikadan’s broken legs begin to heal in Chokiko’s shadow or was he carried out of the ravine like a human newborn, barely able to suck the blood that Inorai or Inoma offered from cuts in their hands?

Shikamaru didn’t tend to look too deeply into the semantics of the text. What mattered was that a Nara had almost died, and an Akimichi had prevented it, and it all had to do with shadows. 

The triad formations began to change after Chokiko and Shikadan’s brush with death. The Nara began to follow Akimichi shadows, those who had to travel in daylight moving just steps ahead of the sun, walking endless cycles around their large and placid companions. Sometimes a Yamanaka shadow would do just as well but their tendency to float during confrontation made it difficult. 

(Yamanaka Inoma, it should be said, managed to successfully keep Shikadan’s cousin Shikata out of the sunlight for a span of nearly five weeks as they completed a new supply line, but as Shikata and Inoma eventually married Shikamaru wasn’t keen to trust the accounts. Yamanaka were notoriously romantically-minded. Troublesome, the lot of them.) 

More thought was put into the manipulation of shadow, not just as a delaying tactic and a way to feed but as an offensive power, and most importantly as a method of protection and then of transportation.

The first Nara to successfully travel for a distance of more than a few miles fused within a teammate’s shadow was Nara Shikana. At the time she was ten years old- only a couple years older than Chouga Akimichi, who claimed on the record that even with Shikana ensconced in his shadow he didn’t feel the weight. 

It didn’t neutralize their single most obvious handicap, but it was a step in the right direction. 

Everything changed again not long after Shikana, Inoko, and Chouga agreed to help Hashirama Senju and Madara Uchiha build their hidden village. It came in the form of the Uzumaki clan, and a very special fuinjutsu.

Suddenly, the sun changed from longtime enemy to a natural phenomenon to be taken advantage of, praised, ignored or cursed. 

Shikana Nara took up cloud-watching. 

Shikamaru’s sun seal was between his shoulder blades, in the spot where Ino would rub his back when he was thinking too hard. It always felt warm even when he was laying in the grass, staring up at the blue sky, partially or sometimes fully hidden in Chouji’s shadow. 

A shadow Shikamaru could enter as easily as breathing, a shadow with which he could stab, strangle, incapacitate. A shadow that could hold any wriggling prey still long enough for him to finish a damn thought and get another hundred steps ahead. 

Neither Ino nor Chouji ever commented on how Shikamaru’s shadow would sometimes lie, with two hands reaching out- even when its owner’s hands were still firmly in his pockets- to grab at the sleeves of the other two. 

There was a Nara who stretched their shadow across the ground, a Nara who survived in the shadow of a friend, a Nara who travelled in a shadow’s path, and Shikamaru, who was certain that whatever he did would be too much effort and probably get him a job he didn’t want. 

Troublesome.


	5. Daddy's Little Girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ino, Inoichi, and monster parenting.

Ino was floating before she was a year old. 

It alarmed her mother but delighted her father, who didn’t even mind occasionally rescuing his cooing daughter from the ceiling. He would wrap the long locks of his hair around her middle and bring her down, cradling her in his arms. Ino would clap and laugh and never take her blue eyes from his. 

“She’s going to be something special,” Inoichi told his wife, who could only shrug with a happy, helpless smile and agree. 

Ino took to the simplistic games quicker than her cousins. Not even Fu could recite the blocks their tutor was holding behind her back faster. When she was finally allowed out with her weighted sandals she led her pack of cousins through the trees of the Nara lands, her laughter carrying on the breeze and causing all who heard it to still. 

It was harder for Ino to draw victims. Ino’s concentration was a flighty thing, as prone to floating away as she was. One moment she would have her chosen target in her blue gaze, prepared to draw them forth or to push her mind out; the next she would be complaining about the heat or the bugs or how her dress was itching. 

“She’ll grow out of it,” her mother assured Inoichi, who could only sigh and hope. 

Ino made up for it in stealth training. On a wall or a ceiling, beneath floorboards or clinging to a sliding screen, she could phase through wood and stone and plaster with ease. She gained control of her voice of Suggestion bit by bit, learning to roll her letters in just the right way. 

The process of drawing dreams from sleeping ears was a bit more complicated, but with her father crouching silently by her side Ino learned to drag the nourishment out like slender rice noodles. She slurped and her father gently scolded her for it. 

Taking over minds and turning enemies into puppets was more complicated and Inoichi spent the night before that training began pacing through three different rooms of the family home, disregarding all doors and striding through walls and dressers until his wife caught him and said, “She’ll be fine.” 

And she was. 

When Ino was officially put into her Ino-Shika-Cho, her father took her hunting. 

Their targets- pre approved by the Hokage- were bandits who had been making a mess along the southern road. 

Inoichi watched his daughter screw up her courage and untie her hair, carrying her water jug and singing an old song. 

They welcomed her in; why wouldn’t they? She was young (too young) and beautiful. Inoichi watched from the trees with one hand on a kunai and the other on a detonation tag as Ino listened to their stories, maneuvering the cook of the group closer and closer to her father until- 

Inoichi slumped forward and the cook picked up the tiny packet Ino had dropped, sprinkling it liberally in the stew. 

All eight were down minutes later. 

Ino followed her father obediently and when he told her to draw, she did, floating above her victim with ease, hair wrapped about his limbs as she took his dreams and his health, took everything that he was. 

“This tastes funny,” Ino said, and Inoichi said, “Sometimes they do.” 

When they had eaten their fill and the extra was gathered- neatly tied up in Inoichi’s hair in shining ribbons, to be distributed to the Old Blood clan members- Inoichi said, “We have to finish it now.” 

Ino swallowed hard and held out a hand but Inoichi shook his head and handed her a kunai. 

“Not this time.” He said. He knew he should let her do it properly, should watch for her technique as she strangled one, clawed the heart from another, but there were limits. 

When the work was done and the bodies disposed of Ino climbed into Inoichi’s arms and he held her all the way back home. The next day she didn’t come out of her room and Inoichi didn’t force her. 

That evening she emerged, red-eyed and straight shouldered, and said to her father, “I need to try again.” 

Inoichi smiled at her and said, “I know.” 

She would grow and learn more. Paired with her Shika and her Cho, she would become the finest of their Clan and their kind, beautiful and bloody. Eventually she would learn to control her floating and her hair without thinking about it. She would be an important soldier in a great and dangerous war, and a continuation of a tradition centuries old. 

Through all of this she would be Inoichi’s precious daughter, his little bush-clover, wrapped in his hair and giggling as she stared at him with her blue, blue eyes.


	6. Testing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we visit the Founding Monster Trio, and Shikana proves to be stubborn.

“I’m gonna fucking die.” 

“No you’re not!” Inoko would have started pulling on her hair again but it had already given up the fight and was floating about her head in tendrils. “Your arm was fine!” 

“False positive.” Shikana blew a smoke ring and remained resolutely rooted in the broad cast of Chouga’s shadow. Inoko had already tried to persuade their friend to move, but he’d refused, as she knew he would.

“You won’t know if you don’t try.” Chouga pointed out. “We promised Mito a full report remember?” 

Agreeing to describe everything (”In painstaking detail you understand? IF SHE SHITS I WANT TO HEAR ABOUT IT!!”) had been the only way Mito Senju had agreed to the three of them being the only witnesses to the testing of the Sun Seal.

“That red haired bitch is trying to roast my entire clan alive is what she’s doing.” Shikana muttered as she twisted her pipe in her hands. “She’s still angry about the White Stone River incident.” 

“Shikana that was a hundred years ago.” Inoko groaned. “What is the matter with you? You’re acting- you’re acting-” a grin split her face, pulling her lips back and showing off the red inside of her mouth. “you’re acting troublesome.” 

Shikana coughed. “No I’m not.” 

“Yes you are.” Chouga said. 

“Hey be on my side!” Shikana said. 

“I am.” Chouga said. “Inoko’s right. We’re running out of sunlight and you’re acting like a stubborn child. You’re not a stubborn child, Shikana. You’re the smartest person I know and you’re afraid.” 

Shikana was going to deny it, they both could see the words forming. 

Then she gave a gut-deep sigh and said, “What if it does work?” 

“What?” Inoko asked. 

“What if it does work?” Shikana scowled at Inoko. “Every time something changes in our clan dynamic it’s immediately followed by bloodshed and destruction.” 

“Now that’s not-” 

“The scourge of our herds after the first pact.” 

“Shikana-” 

“That wasting disease that Chounai’s entire branch caught after the first successful Ino-Shika-Cho formation.” 

“Okay you’re being ridiculous-” 

“Inoma and Shikata dying in the Land of Wind after I figured out shadow travel.” 

“Shikana,” Chouga said gently, “those are coincidences.” 

“Twice is a coincidence. Three times is a pattern, and there’s more where that came from.” 

“You’re afraid of a functioning seal that could let you go out in the sun without bursting into boiling flame because you’re SUPERSTITIOUS?!” Inoko shrieked, and if anything glass had been around it would have shattered.

“There she goes,” Chouga muttered and sure enough Inoko began to float, three feet of space between her sandals and the ground. 

“You’re a SHIKI! You ARE superstition!” Inoko said. “Of all the stupid, pig-headed- I’m the pig! Me! Me me me you, you tick.” 

Shikana’s eyes narrowed. “Say that again.” 

“Tick. Tick, louse, tiny insignificant-” 

“To my face you lousy straw haired-” Shikana had already moved her hands to form the kagemane, to drag Inoko back down to earth before she could escape, when she realized something. 

She was very warm. 

It was like being curled together with her sister and brothers in their nest, but even that heat was subdued. This was different. This was like falling asleep on Chouga in front of a roaring fire. This was sake after a long hunt. This was- 

“Sunlight?” Shikana whispered, and looked up. 

Inoko floated back down to earth, hair already tidying itself back into a bun, and did her best not to look smug. 

“Superstitions,” she said, “are stupid.” 

“Besides.” Chouga said. “We’re not alone now. There’s a whole village behind us. So whatever happens next we can handle it.” He bent down and picked up Shikana’s pipe, dropped when she’d lunged forward and out of his shadow to perform her jutsu. He examined it critically and handed it back to her. “All in one piece. And, surprising no one, so are you.” 

Shikana tucked her pipe away and looked down at her hands. “Wow. Am I really this pale?” 

“Dear you’re all that pale.” Inoko said. “It’s okay we’ll get some color into you. Imagine how much easier it’ll be to pass for human with a tan!” 

“Not too hot?” Chouga asked. Shikana touched her forehead and felt a cool film beginning to form- sweat. 

“I might be.” She admitted. “That feels weird, too.” 

“It’s super gross.” Inoko agreed. “Come on, let’s take the path around the giant rock Hashirama wants to carve his face into.” 

“There’s no cover there, Inoko.” 

“Just making sure you’re not gonna roast is all!” 

“You’re a heinous sow.” Shikana growled and Inoko grinned, throwing her arms around the other woman. Shikana pried her off and, bickering, they made for the path. Chouga plodded along peacefully and thought of what he would say to Mito Senju. 

He decided he’d start with ‘Thank you.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you think you've heard these names before, you have, in Sum of the Parts and also Battle of Wits- Inoko, Shikana, and Chouga are my go-to original trio for Konoha's founding, regardless of the 'verse they're written in.


	7. Haircut

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Haircuts aren't a big deal. Unless you're a Yamanaka. Then they're a huge deal.

The fight was over and Ino had emerged victorious. 

Sakura was being tended on the other side of the arena, and it was a damn good thing Shikamaru always carried extra hair ties. 

“You cut your hair.” 

“Chouji, please, just-” 

Shikamaru remained silent as Chouji stared at Ino, eyes wide and steadily going slitted as, in his distress, his genjutsus began to waver- something Asuma would be scolding him for, if their sensei was there for it. 

“Ino you CUT YOUR-”

“I am AWARE.” Ino hissed, her newly-shortened locks twitching. Shikamaru gently whacked her on the shoulder and she took a deep breath. His fingers now free from the trap his team mate’s hair had become, the shiki studiously continued working Ino’s ragged locks into a ponytail. 

Chouji dropped down on her left, instinctively protecting her weaker side and giving Shikamaru access to his shadow as he clasped his forehead. “Your dad is gonna freak.” 

“It’s just hair.” 

“It’s not just hair, Ino.” Chouji said, and the edge of panic was wearing away to something gentler. “It’s _your_ hair.” 

“Chouji don’t.” Ino pleaded. Shikamaru finished up and said, “It’s not so bad.” 

Chouji shot Shikamaru a look, but held his tongue. Down on the arena floor, Gekko Hayate watched the screen. 

“Kinuta Dosu vs. Akimichi Chouji.” He called. 

Chouji stood and dusted off. “Look after her?” He murmured to Shikamaru, who tersely nodded. 

Chouji jumped the railing and landed hard enough that the tile beneath him cracked. Shikamaru chuckled. 

“You’ve gone and riled him up,” he murmured to Ino, who gave a watery little giggle. As Dosu made his way into the arena she murmured, “Do you think she hates me?” 

Shikamaru looked across the arena to where Sakura was reviving. 

“I don’t know.” He said. Ino’s laugh wasn’t kind. “Liar.” She said. 

“I don’t know enough,” he amended. 

“Better.” Ino said. “Come on.” She stood up. “Let’s go watch Chouji pummel the crap out of that jerk from Sound.” 

Shikamaru nodded and they moved forward towards the railing. He didn’t mention the few strands of pink that Ino had clutched in her fist

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you think you spot a hint of Sakura/Ino, you are not wrong. While I think Asuma was in attendance during the post-forest of death fights, it's better that he shows up later in monster-verse.


	8. Good Stiff Drink

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fathers are often at a loss, whether human or monster.

No one made tea quite like a Nara. Their recipes were varied but the end result was always the same- strong enough to raise the dead. 

That joke and all its variations had long ago run their course. Still, Shikaku could brew tea that would take the roof off your mouth and Choza had never needed it more than at that moment. When Shikaku served he didn't wait, just drained the offered teacup in one go. 

“Bad?” Inoichi asked him with a raised eyebrow. 

Choza put his teacup down and gave his team mate a dead-eyed stare. 

“Kid’s got your lungs, then.” Inoichi snickered. 

Shikaku poured Choza another and said, “Just wait until he starts getting new horn layers.” 

“Reiko has threatened to smother him.” Choza said. “I don’t think I’m adverse to the idea myself. There hasn’t been such a bad teething in the clan since Chohana.”

"I don't envy you that." Shikaku said. "At least we only have to deal with two, not a whole set. Is the soothing salve helping at all?" 

"Chouji seems entirely resistant." Choza said. "And to make matters worse he hates the smell, won't let it anywhere near him if he's lucid." 

"I can try a different recipe." Shikaku offered. 

“At this point, Shika, I might have to take you up on it.” Choza sighed. “I know you’re swamped with the renegotiations at the hospital, but much more of this and I’m gonna tear my horns off.” 

“Poor Cho.” Inoichi simpered. Choza gave him a sour look. “You just wait until Ino starts floating.” He muttered. 

Inoichi’s grin fell off and Shikaku picked it up, gleeful and fanged. “She has, hasn’t she?” He refilled Inoichi’s cup. “Oh, good luck.” 

“You’re gonna need it.” Choza said. 

Inoichi gave both of his friends a rude gesture and drank.


	9. Growing Pains: Ino

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Growing up is hard (and sometimes painful) to do.

Ino was still sniffling about it when Shikamaru and Chouji arrived, both in their finest dress kimonos (although Shikamaru’s was a bit rumpled, and was that red bean paste on Chouji’s sleeve?) but she squared her shoulders and gave them the bravest face she could. For as long as either boy could remember she had kept her blonde hair loose, framed by barrettes. 

Now it was swept back in a tight bun, decorated with gold ribbon. 

“Ino.” Yoshino said warmly, and knelt down in front of the girl as her husband greeted Inoichi. “Congratulations.” She handed Ino a green-wrapped package. 

“Thank you.” Ino said as she accepted the gift and it was the tone that told her friends more than anything that she was unhappy. Reiko also offered her congratulations, then Shikaku and Choza.

“All grown up now, clover.” Choza said with a grin and Ino had to grin back because Akimichi smiles were infectious. 

“Yes she is!” Inoichi was beaming and Shikaku laughed. 

The dinner the Head Families shared was quiet, a sharp contrast to the somewhat wilder afternoon that the Yamanaka Clan had; Ino wasn’t the only young yurei to have their first Cut. No doubt many of her clanmates would be seeking Nara hangover cures in the morning. 

The trimmings of the Cuts had been ritually burned the same way they had been since Konoha’s founding. The Third Hokage’s son Asuma had been the Sarutobi to light the bonfire, with a roguish wink at a tearful Ino and a grin for Inoichi. 

Ino told Shikamaru and Chouji all about it when at last the children were released to the privacy of her bedroom. 

“-and then he just blew and it went up! Faster than building a fire.” 

“It was a jutsu of course it was faster.” Shikamaru said. Ino frowned at him as she tugged at the ribbons in her hair. “It doesn’t matter it was still cool.” She put the ties on her dressing table and turned. 

Both Shikamaru and Chouji were staring at her. 

“What?” She asked. 

“Ino they took so much.” Chouji whispered. Ino smiled at him but it was wobbly smile. “Only four inches.” She said, trying for an airy and dismissive tone. “Papa says it will grow back faster and stronger now.” 

“Did it hurt?” Chouji asked. Ino blinked. “I-” 

“It did.” Shikamaru said bluntly. Ino nodded. “Just a little.” She whispered. “Like a sting, only it didn’t stop stinging.” 

A moment later Shikamaru was on her left side, Chouji her right. Ino let them wrap their arms around her. 

“It’s important.” Ino repeated her mother’s words. “It’s necessary. It, it means I’m grown.” 

“But it still hurt.” Chouji said. 

“Yeah.” Ino said. 

Shikamaru and Chouji shared a look and backed up, letting Ino sit on her futon. They sat with her, and when she leaned on Chouji, Shikamaru produced a comb from a pocket. 

Ino looked at it and sighed. “You can’t even take care of your own hair, Shika.” She scolded him. Shikamaru did his best to imitate his father’s high eyebrow and Ino giggled. “Okay.” She straightened up and Shikamaru began to comb her hair in neat sections. Chouji crossed his legs and Ino stretched her legs out over his. 

“Did you hear what Naruto did today?” Chouji asked. 

“No.” Ino said, eyes wide. Behind her Shikamaru rolled his eyes. “Naruto is an idiot.” 

“He’s not an idiot he’s just free spirited.” Chouji said. “Okay, so-” 

This was how their parents found them an hour or so later. Shikamaru was braiding and unbraiding Ino’s hair while Chouji mimed out the village’s antics. Ino’s tears and her lost hair were forgotten. 

“You know,” Shikaku said to Inoichi as they quietly retreated from checking on the kids, “I think she’s taking it better than you did.” 

“I blame that on you.” Inoichi said sourly. “You’re the one who brought the sake.” 

“I figured it would be useful.” 

“Shikaku we were _ten._ ” 

"I stand by my statement. It was useful, wasn't it?" 

"We drank the whole thing!" 

“And we would have gotten away with it if you hadn’t puked all over the place, Ino.” Choza said at the bottom of the stairs. “All’s well?” 

“As well as it can be.” Inoichi said. 

“Then it’s good enough.” Choza replied. “Come on, Reiko brought the good stuff. Definitely not that rotgut from your first Cut.” 

“That was quality booze!” Shikaku protested. 

“It was absolutely terrible and you know it, Shika.” Choza said amicably. The three friends continued arguing all the way to the library.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yamanaka hair doesn't necessarily have all the nerve endings of, say, skin- if it did a single stray kunai in a battle would completely incapacitate a member of the clan. Still it does have some feeling and traditionally it only gets cut once. 
> 
> Unless, of course, you're Ino.


	10. Growing Pains: Shika

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fangs are troublesome and so are three times great grandmothers.

When they finally grew in, Shikamaru's adult fangs would be indestructible. 

That wasn’t a boast or a bit of vampiric propaganda, it was _fact._ Shikamaru had seen his father bite through a kunai, witnessed his uncle stop shuriken midspin. Like Akimichi teeth, Nara fangs were meant to last. 

Problem being when the baby fangs went and the adult ones came in they fought to remain, roots holding right. Which meant the whole process hurt like a bitch. 

Curled up on his side and staring at the wall, Shikamaru’s face scrunched up into a snarl as another jolt of pain rocked his jaw and his head pounded with fever. This off-and-on ache had begun a week before and both his father and uncle were ecstatic. Well, as ecstatic as they were capable of being, which meant claps on the back and sage instructions to ‘ride it out’. 

Riding it out was a complete and total fucking drag. His mother had provided him with lots of leather pieces leftover from the family tannery, cut to size so that small shiki jaws could close around them and tear. 

There were a lot of pieces. He’d torn through four or five already. 

One baby fang had finally given up the fight and Shikamaru had obediently placed it in the horn box that his father had used, and Shikaku’s mother, and all the way back to- well, whenever someone had made the damn box. Shikamaru was sure he could remember if only his head wasn’t pounding quite so hard. 

Asuma had dismissed Shikamaru from training until he was finished teething and that was almost as aggravating as the pain. Training was troublesome but being separated from his friends was annoying. Shikamaru wanted Ino. He wanted Chouji. He could have neither, because in his current state he was sick and aggressive. His friends could handle it but the rest of Konoha? Probably not. 

Another surge of pain and Shikamaru curled up even tighter. In his mind he laid out shogi matches against his father, following his strategies. When that could no longer distract him he moved on to prior missions, laying out events and mapping how they could have gone, going forward a hundred steps to come back to the beginning and then move out a hundred steps in another direction. 

Shikamaru had used a numbing salve but it wasn’t helping. It hadn’t helped Shikaku much either but his mother had provided it without comment. 

Outside, the sun began to set. The pain wasn’t so bad at night but sleep wasn’t possible. When Shikamaru could ignore the pain the silence overwhelmed him, and then came the maybes and the what ifs and the future and the past and-

and someone was in his room. 

Shikamaru forced himself up, forced his hand to the kunai under the pillow and his other hand to the shadow cast by the shoji screen. 

“Oh calm down brat you couldn’t outshadow me on your best day.” 

Shikamaru blinked blearily at the woman emerging from the shadow of the door. She was tall, angular, black hair swept back. A scar marred the right side of her mouth and she wore deer leathers. 

Shikamaru relaxed but only a little. You didn’t let your guard down around Elder Shikana, or she reminded you why. He glared at her. 

“What, no greeting?” His three times great grandmother grinned at him, showing off her perfect adult fangs. “I figured. Little snot you’re going to be worse than your father. From what I hear you already are.” 

Shikamaru bore teeth at her but the effect was greatly lessened by the aggravated redness of his gums and the lack of one fang. Shikana snorted. “Enough of that. If your father continues fretting he’s going to worry the deer.” She moved to the side of the bed and put down the wrapped bundle she had been carrying. “Be honored, brat. I don’t do this for every teething little tick.” 

She unwrapped the bundle and Shikamaru stared at its contents. A horn- large, curved, a reddish black with a pearly sheen. Chouji's horns were similar in color, if a bit more curved. 

Shikamaru looked from it to her and back. 

“I can’t.” He said. 

“You can and you will.” Shikana said. “A week is long enough for the future head of our Clan. Maybe I'm getting soft in my old age but there's no need for you to suffer. You'll do that enough when you're grown.” 

“Elder-” 

“Shut up,” Shikana said, turning and holding the horn before Shikamaru, “and bite, brat. With all the strength in your scrawny little body.” 

Shikamaru licked his lips nervously. His jaw ached. Shikana waited with one eyebrow raised. 

Shikamaru took a deep breath and did as he was told. He leaned forward, opened his mouth as wide as it would go (wider than Ino, not nearly as wide as Chouji) and bit. 

The roots of his second fang, resistant to leather, couldn’t stand up to an Oni horn. They broke and Shikamaru coughed the offending tooth out into Shikana’s waiting palm. 

She eyed the fang. “Decent condition. I suppose it will come in handy.” She turned, dropped it into the box and replaced the horn in its bundle. Shikamaru rubbed his jaw and winced. 

“It’s still going to hurt,” Shikana said, pulling a jar from a pouch and leaving it on the table, “but you’ll get over it.” 

“Thank you.” Shikamaru said, because what else could you say? Shikana grinned at him, and- taking box and bundle- disappeared into the shadows of the door once again. 

Shikamaru examined the salve Shikana had left for a moment or two before slathering it on. For the first time in a week, he managed to sleep. In the bed of his gums, two fine white points began the slow process of rising.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you wondering, yes, that is Chouga's horn. 
> 
> The Nara have two upper fangs which get at the blood and a strong set of lower teeth to hold the neck in place. Those teeth act just like human ones and are replaced in the same timely fashion. It's the fangs, which mature more slowly, that are a complete pain- hence why Shikamaru is dealing with them now (having graduated from the academy and begun training with Asuma) rather than as a very young child.


	11. Growing Pains: Cho

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nobody likes itching.

The woods were quiet, serene, peaceful, calm, and a number of other words inferring general tranquility. 

It was a beautiful, carefree spring day in Konoha. 

-BAM-

Startled, a few birds took off from their chosen perch in an old thick-trunked tree while soundly scolding the noisy fellow who had ruined their rest. The fellow in question ignored them. Instead he backed up a few feet and ran headfirst into the tree trunk again. 

-BAM-. 

The impact shook the tree down to its roots and caused a squirrel to start cursing vibrantly. 

"You keep running at it cockeyed, cousin, you're gonna need a new trunk."

The speaker, who was lounging against a rock in a cleared part of the forest only a few yards away, didn't seem too perturbed at a child running into a tree. Then again, it wasn't just any ordinary child, and he wasn't an ordinary man. 

That was clear with the two curved horns on his head, colored in the spectrum of orange and brown. It became abundantly clear when he yawned, and beneath the star markings on his face hidden flaps of skin allowed his mouth to open, open, open wider than was seemly or anatomically possible, showing off an impressive set of sharp teeth. 

The boy, whose horns were more tightly curled and red, sat back on his rump with a pained groan. 

"Yeah I know." The man said, moving and sitting down beside his cousin. "But since _one_ of us who shall remain nameless won't go to the medics for his cream, we're stuck running into trees all day." 

"I hate that stuff." The boy said. "It smells weird." 

"It smells like medicine, Chouji, which is what it is." 

"The medics are weird, Touma." 

"I've never met a doctor who wasn't and I'm including my brother in that." Touma said wisely. Chouji groaned and reached up with small clawed hands. Touma intercepted them. "No itching." 

"But it's awful!" Chouji protested. 

"It'll pass." Touma said. "You scratch your layers before they get hard you're asking for trouble and you know it." 

Chouji grumbled but he did know. It was one of the cardinal rules. Scratches in horn layers before they were fully hard led to hidden cracks, and cracks could lead to trouble in a fight. Never itch your horns when you were getting new layers. No matter how bad the itch was. Running into trees, however, was perfectly acceptable. 

"Here." Touma said. "Let me try something." He took a piece of cloth from a pocket and, wrapping it neatly around his cousin's horn, began making a motion like he was polishing brass work. "Better?" 

Chouji nodded. "A little." 

"Good." Touma continued. 

"I just want this to be done." Chouji said. "It's not fair. Shikamaru and Ino only have to deal with stuff like this once!" 

"Would you rather go through teething a second time?" Touma asked him. "Because I remember you teething, kid, and let me tell you no one got any sleep for a year." 

Chouji frowned. "No." He admitted. 

"Would you rather have your hair hurt when it gets cut?" Touma asked. 

"No." Chouji looked at his shoes. 

"What are we, Chouji?" Touma asked gently. 

"We're the Wall." Chouji recited faithfully. 

"And a Wall can handle itchy horns, can't it?" Touma asked. 

"I guess so." Chouji said. "But Touma it really does itch!" 

Touma chuckled. "Don't worry you'll be good in a couple of days and you'll be tearing around with your friends wreaking havoc again." 

"We don't wreak havoc!" Chouji protested. Touma gave him A Look. "And who was it who, how did Lord Shibi put it, aggravate the Aburame hives to near insect rebellion?" 

"That was all Naruto's fault." 

"Oh sure use Naruto as a scapegoat. Remind me again who came home with three honeycombs? Stuffed in his backpack?" 

Chouji coughed and flushed red. 

"You shouldn't use your impenetrable skin for evil, Chouji." Touma said. "At least not until you're old enough to get away with it." 

"Shino said that the bees make enough honey for themselves and for people!" Chouji protested. 

Touma sighed. "And I'm sure he knows, but that doesn't mean you don't tend to carry chaos around. You were such a sweet little oni what happened? Oh, I know what happened. You got friends." 

"I like my friends!" Chouji said. 

"I like your friends too, kiddo." Touma said, moving to the other horn as Chouji snuggled against him. "And your dad does, and everyone does. Except Chicho. But Chicho hates everyone." 

"Not everyone." Chouji said. "He likes Uchiha Shisui." 

"Ohhooo." Touma crowed. "Does he now?" 

"Well whenever Fugaku-san sends Shisui Dad makes sure to have Chicho talk to him." Chouji pointed out. "And Chicho never frowns at him like he frowns at Keisuke or Ami. I think he even lets Shisui see his horns. Don't tell anyone." Chouji said that last part in a whisper. 

Touma chuckled. "Kid, one of these days your power of observation is gonna get you in some deep shit." 

"Touma!" Chouji gave Touma a scandalized look. "You can't say that!" 

"When your dad isn't around I can." Touma replied. "Okay, get up. Let's find you a better tree trunk." 

He led his cousin deeper into the clan lands. For a man as big as Touma and a child as portly as Chouji, they disappeared into the green gloom without a sound. 

At least until an echoing 'BAM' sounded from another part of the forest, followed by a cheerful "Oh, no wait you're stuck- you're stuck Chouji hang on- okay there we go. Now let's try that again."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is another version of this story- posted on my tumblr and titled Helping Hands- where Ino and Chouji have a moment. I wrote this version to better fit with the other two. 
> 
> Touma and Chicho are Akimichi OCs. Touma is The Cool Cousin Everyone Wants To Be, Would Probably Wear A Leather Jacket If That Was A Thing. Chicho is the world's grumpiest secretary. Who definitely has a thing for Shisui Uchiha. 
> 
> (the Uchiha are intact in Monster-Trio verse because REASONS.)
> 
> Oni horns as I've described them are really more like ram horns- keratin with a living core- and thus, in reality, wouldn't itch when growing. So I'm waving my magic fanfic wand here.


	12. The Nose Knows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You can lie to your friends and I'll lie to mine but nobody lies to the dog.

Inuzuka Kiba didn’t like Team 10. 

He did his best not to show it because they were his year mates and fellow ninja. One could argue that it wasn’t even team 10 _personally_ that he disliked. Shikamaru was kind of a jerk if you didn’t know how to handle him that was true, and Ino was bossy as all hell unless you stood your ground. Chouji was almost too nice. They weren’t mean or unnecessarily aggressive, didn’t mess with the pack order and always did their share of the work. 

So it wasn’t really team 10. It was just- 

Just- 

There were a whole lot of justs. 

Very clever genjutsus could fool the eyes but it was hard to fool the nose, once Kiba had been taught the proper clan techniques. Kiba and Akamaru too could smell blood before Shikamaru ever came into view. Ino carried a fear-sweat scent, inevitable and crushing. Chouji smelled sweet but only until a well trained nose could get at the rot and bone and marrow underneath. 

This wasn’t the case with their parents and as Kiba’s mother explained to him that was intentional. Team 10 were children still, not yet leaving the village on regular missions. They didn’t need to mask their smells like their parents did. 

Kiba wished they would because it would make dealing with them that much easier. He felt he had an unfair handicap in interactions with inoshikacho. Everyone else could forget or pretend to forget. He was always reminded. 

When they graduated Kiba was relieved (and unsurprised) that Chouji, Shikamaru, and Ino were put on a team together. He was more than happy to be paired off with Shino Aburame and Hinata Hyuuga. 

Then came the chunin exams and the Forest of Death and as they all sat around defending Sasuke from who-even-knew-what in the shadows, Kiba realized with a start that nearly sent Akamaru off his head that Shikamaru- in a tree on the northern point, eyes best for seeing in darkness- didn’t smell like blood. 

Ino guarding Sakura didn’t smell like fear. 

And Chouji, standing directly at Sasuke’s feet while his clanmate Uchiha Shisui did who-even-KNEW-what to Sasuke's neck, didn’t smell like rot or marrow. 

In the dark forest, faced with an onslaught of growth that no genin would ever really be prepared for, Kiba wasn’t sure if he was relieved or horrified. Because he was growing up- and so were the monsters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In canon we all know that Kiba, Shikamaru, Chouji and Naruto had this sort of strange almost-friendship that lasted at least until their last year of academy. In my headcanon (possibly substantiated by canon but I'm not certain) Kiba's sense of smell is not heightened until around that last year, when he learns how to channel chakra to his nose so that he can track. Before then, the scents of the monster trio wouldn't have mattered because he couldn't smell them. 
> 
> Akamaru probably should have been more prevalent in this short but I have a really hard time including him so I apologize to Akamaru fans.


	13. Feeding Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The considerations of a human-eating Clan Head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Oni eat humans in this chapter. Human bodies are treated like the meat you'd buy in a supermarket. The word butchering is used unironically. I've updated the tags accordingly to include body horror just in case. While I did my best to insinuate and not blatantly describe I'd like those who squick easily to proceed with caution.

Akimichi did not need to Eat often. 

There was a difference between eating and Eating. One was done regularly and with great gusto, leading to a Clan reputation that was jovial, approachable, and somewhat gluttonous. The other was done every year and a half or so depending on the size of the Akimichi in question and was kept Very Private. 

For obvious reasons. 

Whether other oni in the world needed to Eat regularly, Choza didn't know. The Akimichi, it seemed, had streamlined their metabolisms- with the help of the calorie chakra control techniques- to better fit first with the Nara and the Yamanaka and then with Konoha and its mostly human population. The oldest members of the clan, like Great Uncle Torifu, could go nearly three years between meals. 

The Akimichi clan was large but its core Old Blood numbers were not. When Choza took over after the death of his father Choumaru, there were forty Old Bloods. Now the number had increased to forty five. When considering that there were over eighty Old Blood shiki in the Nara clan and an equalish number of yurei in the Yamanaka it wasn't so impressive a sum. 

Still it could be and was considered an alarming number of people who needed to Eat. 

The Hokage's office was as accommodating as it could be, turning the other way when corpses of enemies went missing and setting up feeding missions like clockwork. There was a strict schedule and Choza made sure his clan stuck to it, and anyone who deviated knew they had better have a damn good explanation. 

Clan members who chafed at the strict rules were free to go, with the understanding that once their hitai-ate was turned in they were guaranteed no protection from the Hunters that still roamed. No one had left in thirty years. 

Choza thought about these things as he carried his kill back to the cavern hideout- one of several that dotted the Land of Fire, maintained by the Triad. Beside him Chicho also bore a body. It was a bit excessive but they were not just feeding themselves. Besides if there was nothing left for Mist's hunter-nin to track then so much the better. 

Choza would have preferred something other than Mist Ninja for Chouji's first feeding, but you took what you could get. These were younger ninja. With luck they hadn't gained that gamy toughness that came with proximity to salt water. 

Chouji and Makaro were waiting quietly, playing cards. When Choza performed the first portion of the seals that unlocked the door, he felt the soft flare of his son's chakra before Chouji finished it. 

The illusion of a rock wall crumbled away and the two oni swiftly entered before the genjutsu returned. In the inner part of the cave Chouji and Makaro had both stood. 

The two adults put their kills on a tall stone table, cut with deep furrows to channel blood away. Makaro and Chouji looked at one another, cautiously excited. Chicho had to smile as their disguises began to flicker until finally in their excitement the genjutsus dispelled entirely, leaving two growing oni with short horns. 

"Hungry?" Chicho asked. Makaro nodded vigorously. Choza gestured for Chouji to come closer and the child did.

"What do you see, Chouji?" Choza asked his son. Chouji examined the bodies carefully. 

"No wrinkles." He said. "They're young." He cautiously sniffed the air. "I smell saltwater. They're-Type A and B?" 

"I thought it was A and O." Makaro said, worried. 

"A and B." Chicho confirmed. "Don't worry, Makaro, it's hard to tell O and B apart." 

Chouji sniffed again. "Pa I smell poison." He said. Choza nodded. "It's the kunai." He said, gesturing to the weapons pouch on one corpse. "We'll take them home to Shikaku. Auntie Sakuya, too." 

The next steps were lessons largely unchanged for hundreds of years. The clothes were cut away, all identifying marks remembered. Personal items were catalogued and some were destroyed. Others were deemed useful to Konoha and kept. One body was cleaned and the other was not because you didn't always have time to wash your food before you ate it and it was a lesson best learned early. 

Chouji and Makaro helped drain some of the blood into special jars which Chicho sealed into a scroll. No use wasting it- it would go directly to the Nara once they were home in Konoha. The hair was left because "The Yamanaka are picky." 

Then came butchering. 

Some Old Bloods thought it best to learn with tools. Chicho was one of these, Choza was not. They had compromised on the walk to the hideout- one would be properly butchered with teeth and claws, the other would be taken apart with blades. 

It was a lot of meat, even for four oni. "We'll take the livers home to your mother," Choza said conspiratorially to Chouji, who giggled and peeled another layer of muscle off the 'proper butcher' body with his sharp claws. Makaro and Chicho were more scientific about it but the end result was the same. 

Choza shared a heart with Chouji and wiped the dark sticky blood off his son's cheek. "Have you been washing your face?" He asked sternly, seeing dirt buildup in the flaps under his son's spirals. Chouji shied guiltily away and Choza sighed. "Full bath when we get home. You know better." 

"Yes Pa." 

"Chouji you gotta try this!" Makaro said, snapping a bone and offering half to his cousin. "Suck the marrow out first it's really good!" 

When their meal was done Chouji lay on his back and stared at the ceiling. 

"I don't think I can move." Makaro said. 

"Well you're going to." Chicho said as he offered them bottles of water. "Wash up." 

With only minimal grumbling, they did. Chicho and Choza walked them through cleaning the hideout, storing what was left of their meal in the same way they'd stored the blood for the Nara. A well placed fire jutsu burned up the dark stains on the stone table, an accompanying water jutsu drenched everything down. 

They waited until nightfall to leave the hideout and travelled by night until they came home. Nara Hideto was guarding the gate when they reached Konoha and accepted the scroll of blood-jars from Chicho with a fanged smile and a 'welcome back'. 

The lights in the Akimichi compound were burning bright and cheery for them. When the doors were pushed open the courtyard was aglow with lanterns and cheering. 

Making it back alive from a feeding mission, especially a feeding mission with children, was always a cause for celebration. 

The big red door closed behind them and disguises were shed. Chouji took up his favorite place on his father's shoulders, holding tight to Choza's spiraling red horns. There was laughter and music and even younger clan members whose horns hadn't yet gained a single layer gazing at Makaro and Chouji with admiration and jealousy. 

"I hear you brought me some liver," Reiko said to Choza, showing off every perfect sharp tooth, and Choza laughed a deep-bellied laugh and confessed that he had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Makaro is not an OC- he's anime-canon. Torifu is also canon, and was on a team with Hiruzen during the (second?) Great Ninja War. Everyone else mentioned is an OC. You'll remember Auntie Sakuya from the short 'Plate Up' in If You Want Blood (You've Got It). 
> 
> I imagine that the Nara get night gate watch a lot. It's not like they really sleep.


	14. Particular Skills

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ino and Shikamaru run a mission without Chouji.

Chouji had helped them get into the compound, but that was far as his aid could go.

Shikamaru and Ino had both lobbied Asuma to alter the mission’s parameters. It was equal parts being aggravated at their teammate being left out and because neither of them liked the assignment much and Chouji could make anything okay even when it was such a _drag._

As their teacher had pointed out, however, you couldn’t exactly stuff an oni in a washroom or hide one behind a vase, even an oni as young (and, comparatively, small) as Chouji.

So that left Ino, Shikamaru, and the mission.

Finding the right bedroom was easy. Ino, wearing a servant’s garb, obtained directions from an older servant and obediently delivered her freshly washed linens. In the empty room she looked around. It was opulent, for the third son of a high ranking official. She smelled money laundering. 

Ino immediately did a basic trapsweep and finding nothing, crossed the fingers of her right hand.

There was a shudder up her back and when she looked over her shoulder she saw the top of Shikamaru’s head sticking up out of her shadow, his red eyes blinking slowly as he took in the area. Ino didn’t speak, just let her teammate work. Shikamaru looked over the whole room slower than a tortise crossing the road. Had they been doing anything other than work Ino would have dragged him bodily out of her shadow but this was Different. This was why they had been paired for the mission. Shikamaru saw more than Ino ever could. 

Finally he nodded and Ino relaxed. Shikamaru’s neck emerged, and then his shoulders. When he had both arms free he braced himself and pushed up as though lifting himself out of a hole. A moment later he had parted from Ino’s shadow entirely and stood.

“Nobles trust their guards too much.” Ino murmured. 

“This noble doesn’t think he needs guards at all.” Shikamaru frowned at the washbowl in the corner. “Is that made of solid gold?”

“Yep.” Ino said.

Shikamaru snorted and looked at the still-folded futon. “We have five hours before the target goes to bed. I’ll stay here.”

“I’ll go to the servants’ quarters.” Ino said. “Luck!” She reached out with her pinky and even though Shikamaru rolled his eyes, he linked his pinky with hers for a moment before they parted. By the time Ino made it to the door, Shikamaru had already oozed into the narrow line of shadow cast by the futon.

The rest of the day passed, and when evening at last fell, Keichi Shimamura returned to the household fresh from a tea ceremony at his favorite brothel. The futon had been dutifully unfolded and the lanterns lit. Keichi didn’t waste a lot of time cleaning up. He headed for bed, humming snatches of songs out of tune before he fell into the sleep of the young and the drunk.

—

It was nearing midnight when he first heard the scratching.

It was soft, barely there- a branch on the window? Yet loud enough to wake him from a sound slumber.

Keichi blinked into the darkness. Nothing.

He closed his eyes. The scratching came again. He opened them.

This time the scratching continued for a moment or so, then ceased.

Keichi sat up and looked around. The vague shapes of his belongings gained a bit of definition as he raked his gaze over them.

Nothing was out of place.

He grumbled and rolled over.

There was a drawing of breath, not his own. It was a woman, soft and sweet.

Keichi froze.

The breathing got a little louder.

Keichi forced himself to roll in the other direction. For the third time the darkness gave him nothing.

Then he felt something on the top of his head. A water droplet.

Keichi raised his eyes to the ceiling.

She hung there, wide blue eyes lifeless, mouth hanging open in a dark O. Her kimono was fine, once; now it was waterlogged and algae grew in the creases.

She giggled and Keichi found he couldn’t move, couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything but watch as she clawed her way across the ceiling, down the wall, onto the floor.

She stretched out her arms and curled clawlike hands against the wood. Then she started to come towards him, crawling with that sinister smile and that soft girlish giggle.

“N-no,” he croaked, but she didn’t stop coming terrible and slow. “NO!”

He scrabbled backwards and beneath him the futon and the floor began to sink. He stared at the darkness pooling over the padding, over the blankets and across his knees. He was level with the coming monster now, sliding down into an abyss from which there was no escape. She reached for him. Her hair writhed about her head, tangling in braids, braids turning to rope, rope wrapping around his neck.

She leaned in close as the void below let his body dangle and her hair above began to strangle the life out of him.

“I’m waiting, Keichi.” She murmured. “I’m waiting for you, darling.”

—

The guards who made the rounds the next morning found Keichi Shimamura sitting in the corner of his bedroom, white as snow and babbling about a confession he had to make. Once he had some strong tea in him and was judged lucid by his mother, he was led to the magistrate.

“Confession.” Ino grumbled as she walked beside Shikamaru. “We should have just killed him.”

“The client was clear.” Shikamaru said. “He wanted Shimamura brought to justice publicly.”

“He murdered the client’s daughter!” Ino exclaimed.

She’d been found face-down in a pond near her home. The client had enough circumstantial evidence but without a confession there was no way an apothecary would convince a noble family that one of their own had committed a crime.

“Now he has to either live with the shame he’s brought on his family and himself or commit seppuku.” Shikamaru said. “We did our jobs.”

“Still leaves a bad taste in my mouth.” Ino grumbled. “His thoughts were so- vapid. Like drinking vinegar.”

“His blood wasn’t that good either.” Shikamaru agreed.

“How did it go?” Chouji asked them when they reached the rendezvous point.

“Mission accomplished.” Shikamaru said. “A full confession was logged with the village magistrate an hour before we left.”

“No problems getting out of the Shimamura compound?” Asuma asked.

“It was easy.” Ino said. “I got to do my water genjutsu! It held up perfectly, sensei, didn’t it Shikamaru?”

“She looked like a waterlogged rat.” Shikamaru agreed.

“WHAT? Shikamaru you JERK-” Ino jumped on Shikamaru and Chouji grabbed at the both of them, protesting. Asuma shook his head and waited for his little oni peacekeeper to finish up. “And the shadow sinking jutsu?” He asked.

“It could use some work.” Shikamaru said.

“I’m sure it was fine!” Chouji said.

Shikamaru shrugged and Ino elbowed him. “Let’s go home.” She said.

“Can we stop for dango?” Chouji asked.

“We always stop for dango, Chouji.” Ino said.

“But this is special dango! Celebratory dango. You scared a guy so bad he peed himself!”

“How do you know that?!”

Chouji looked shifty. “Um.”

“Oh my god.” Ino blanched. “Oh my god it got in my hair, didn’t it?”

“It’s not really that bad, Ino-”

“NOT BAD?! ASUMA SENSEI I NEED A HOT SPRING NOW-”

“Ino it’s really not-”

Chouji worked on calming Ino down and Shikamaru sighed deeply.

“Too much like work?” Asuma asked him.

“You have no idea.” Shikamaru said. Then, “We are getting dango, right?”

Asuma laughed and patted the shiki on the head. “Of course we are.”

And they did.

Right after Ino washed her hair.


	15. Catch A Tiger By The Toe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Someone on tumblr asked for monster trio ChoujixHinata. I deliver! This is the part where I remind you that the monster trio universe is by no means set for ships; aside from SakuraxIno, all other potential pairings are up in the air. That being said I had a lot of fun with this one. There's some secondary TentenxNeji in here as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for canon-typical violence and descriptions of monsters rending humans limb from limb. You know, little oni things.

The first Oni Hinata Hyuuga sees is Akimichi Choza.

It’s not on purpose; she’s six and she’s learning and activating her byakugan is important practice, very important because the Elders all stare at her when she can’t do it on command. She had taken to wandering the halls, letting certain things- her mother’s favorite vase, the door to Hanabi’s nursery- act as chosen triggers. See the vase, try your byakugan.

It’s working out okay- she’s just passed Michi in the kitchen kneading dough, and seeing through the walls is becoming more fun than frightening- when she rounds the corner to the door which leads into the inner courtyard.

In Hinata’s mind’s eye the moment is dark and backlit in orange, though it couldn’t have been later than two in the afternoon at most.

Her father is sitting at the table brought out for special meetings and across from him is a monster.

A giant, sharp clawed, horned nightmare with a mane of hair the color of blood and teeth sharpened to fine white points. There is paperwork between them and he is talking and so is Hiashi, not a weapon in sight.

Hinata is too shocked to scream. When the monster looks at her she recognizes the kind crinkle of its slitted eyes, the blue streaks on its cheeks, the Akimichi kamon embroidered in gold on the monster’s expensive kimono sleeves.

The monster that is Choza puts his head down, turns to the side so that the child cannot see him fully anymore, and says, “Hyuuga-san. Your daughter.”

Her nursemaid is summoned and Hinata is removed.

Later, she cries into her mother’s front. Koshi says to her, gently, “You mustn’t do that to Akimichi-san. It’s rude.”

Hinata is too young to understand how it is rude and why it is important, but her mother has not been wrong before.

“He would never hurt you.” Koshi continues. “Akimichi-san is a good monster. Be careful around his clan, Hinata. They’re sensitive about how they look.”

Hinata can understand that. She promises her mother she’ll obey.

Choza is careful when he comes next, giving Hinata plenty of space. She does her best to be brave. Without her eyes, there is no monster.

She knows it’s in there somewhere.

—

Hinata is ten and Choza has a son named Chouji.

He’s gentle and he’s nice. Not nice like Naruto, a whirling dervish, or nice like Kiba, eager and mischievous. Chouji is an old nice, a wise-nice. He always brings plenty of food and he shares. He’s not very good at playing the Ninja game, so sometimes he sits with Hinata and braids grass.

Once they make a braid long enough to jump rope. Sakura and Ino are more than happy to try but Shikamaru claims Ino is cheating. Ino yells at him. Chouji shakes his head and calms them both down. Chouji can calm anyone down. 

Hinata trains with her father, with Hanabi, with the Elders and her mother and Ko. She no longer has a problem activating her dojutsu. Sometimes when the wind coming in the classroom window is just warm enough and Iruka has hit that perfect soothing lecture drone Hinata will steal a glance down a few desks.

Chouji’s hair is entirely uncontrollable, just like his father’s.

Hinata enjoys the spring air and wonders what Chouji looks like.

 _Really_ looks like.

She doesn’t peek. That would be rude.

—

Chouji comes to visit her in the hospital after the chunin exams and he drags Ino with him.

“I was gonna drag Shikamaru too,” he tells Hinata, “but his mom got to him first.”

Ino giggles and puts down the flowers. “Yarrow.” She says to Hinata. “This lug would have given you tulips or something.”

“There’s nothing wrong with tulips!” Chouji protests. Ino rolls her eyes. “Boys wouldn’t know the language of flowers if it bit them, would they, Hinata?”

Despite the pain, despite her mother’s worry and her father’s stormy countenance when he’d come earlier, Hinata giggles.

“I am betrayed by my True Grass Friend.” Chouji laments. “Woe is me.”

“Shut up and give her the mochi you smuggled in here.” Ino instructs. Chouji obeys with a wide grin.

Hinata eats mochi with her friends, smells the delicate scent of yarrow and thinks about Chouji’s teeth.

—

“Did you know?” Neji asks Hinata later when their collective wounds are not so raw, and she admits that she did.

Hinata almost asks Neji to describe what he saw, but it’s clear that her cousin is still struggling.

(He isn’t the only one and she knows that now. The genjutsus that stick to the Triad like glue are as much for their protection as their tactical advantage.)

“You shouldn’t look without permission.” Hinata tells Neji. “It’s rude.”

It speaks of how far they’ve come that Neji doesn’t scoff at her. Instead he sagely nods.

—

The crown placed carefully on Hinata’s head is made of tightly braided grass with little daisies interspersed like gems.

“We did it!” Chouji says to her and drops to the ground by her side. No doubt Ko is watching from afar; any time a boy is within ten feet of Hinata he is watching.

Hinata smiles at him. “You have your new earrings.” She says, and Chouji touches the studs self-consciously.

“They feel weird.” He confesses. “Not as heavy as my hoops. I gave them back to Dad.” He leans back on palms bigger than her head. “Ino’s already complaining that they don’t match anything in her wardrobe but she won’t take them off, either.”

Hinata giggles and they sit like that for an hour or more, quietly watching the sun go down.

—

Asuma is dead and Team Eight is going to see Chouji. 

(they have already been to see Ino, who was floating above her bed with her hair undone, eyes red and makeup washed off. Shikamaru would not come to the door and his mother promised to convey their deepest sympathies.) 

Kiba doesn’t want to go and both Shino and Hinata are not having it.

“You don’t understand.” Kiba says. “I just- the _smell_ \- come on guys.”

“You said yourself that their smell had disappeared.” Shino said. “Why? Because they use the same cleaning regimens and jutsus as their parents.”

“Look the whole clan freaks me out,” Kiba says. “They ALL freak me out.” Akamaru whines.

Hinata looks Kiba straight in the eye and gives him the best impression of her father she can muster. “If Kurenai had died in the line of duty, Chouji would come to us.” She says. “And so would Shikamaru and Ino.”

Shino doesn’t say he agrees but he does push his glasses up in an agreeing fashion.

Chouji is by the river that winds through the Akimichi clan lands, at the base of the waterfall where he taught Hinata how to blow bubbles with a hollow reed and where Naruto perfected his belly flop. Hinata can see the tear tracks although Chouji’s done a good job of washing up.

Shino and Kiba don’t stay long and Chouji says to Kiba with a little bow, “Thank you. I know you don’t like it here.”

Kiba grumbles and mutters and manages a half-assed bow of his own before Shino drags him off and leaves them alone save for a couple of his scouting kikai.

Hinata puts a hand on Chouji’s shoulder. He looks at the water.

“I can tear men’s arms off with as much effort as picking up a pair of chopsticks,” Chouji whispers, “and I couldn’t save him.”

He begins to cry again, silent exhausted tears. Hinata holds him, notes that even in grief he keeps his head balanced in such a way that it’s away from her, so she can’t feel the horns she can’t see.

Hinata comes home late and is far too old for a chaperone but Neji is waiting outside anyway.

“It’s going to happen.” He says to her. “We lose the ones we love.”

Hinata doesn’t reply but she does lean on him and he hugs her back.

—

If there’s one good thing (in a myriad of terrible awful no good very bad things) about the growing unrest in the village, it’s that Hiashi can’t keep redrafting a marriage contract for his daughter to Sasuke Uchiha.

“Your dad wants to marry you to Sasuke?” Tenten asks and she makes such a face that Hinata can’t help but laugh. “You two don’t have anything in common.”

“It’s not about commonalities.” Hinata says, reciting her mother’s words to her when she first heard of the potential match. “It’s for the good of both Clans and the village.”

“Man I am never gonna understand clan politics.” Tenten complains as she sharpens a kunai. Then, “Huh. A byakugan and a sharingan. What would that make? Maybe a kid with one in either eye?”

“That seems exhausting.” Hinata said. "Think of the chakra strain." 

“Boy and how.” Tenten critically examines her kunai. “Still it’s not like the Uchiha or the Hyuuga are hurting for members. I mean basing your daughter’s marriage around political strength is important, I guess, but there’s other options.” Tenten grins at her. “Like Chouji.”

Hinata blinks. “What?”

“Oh come on.” Tenten says to her. “The guards don’t even question him anymore.”

“We’ve been friends for a long time!” Hinata says. “Like Ino and Sakura.”

“Ino and Sakura are girls.” Tenten points out. “Chouji is a boy. And an heir to a Pillar clan, no less.”

Hinata flushes. “Chouji is one of my best friends.”

“What’s his favorite color?”

“Green but he thinks he looks better in red.”

“Okay. Favorite food?”

“Everything,” Hinata says with a giggle, “but he really likes korean barbecue.” She pauses and at Tenten’s encouraging noise she added, “He also said that rock ninja were pretty good. Something about the grit they’re around all the time.”

“Oh that’s nasty.” Tenten cackles. “Okay, what’s his favorite place to be in the village?”

“The waterfall on the Akimichi clan lands. Or a restaurant. Probably Maru’s, he loves the dumplings there.”

“Favorite thing to do at festivals? Aside from eat.”

“Performing the Tea Ceremony.” Hinata says. 

“What scent of soap does he use?”

“Well he has this stuff that cuts down on smells for missions like everyone but when he’s just in the village he uses a sandalwood and…cocoa…”

Tenten’s grin can politely be described as ‘shit eating’.

“I don’t even know what kind of soap your cousin uses,” she says to Hinata as she throws her perfectly sharpened kunai straight through a falling leaf. “and we’ve been fucking for like four months now.”

—

It’s a war and all gloves are off.

Mist’s Suikazan have already begun baring their teeth and drowning any enemy foolish enough to approach their pools. The Sunbird clan of Sand is scorching the earth into glass, their Kazekage lifting the flightless on pillars of silica so that their fire can rain down.

In Hinata’s sight all is teeth and horn, strangling hair and screeches before long white fangs.

An enemy approaches on a Rock nin’s weak side and from the shadows a pair of clawed hands reach up, grabbing ankles and pulling the screaming man down into the dark. Arms and legs and partially chewed torsos are strewn about like a child’s toys.

Somewhere on the battlefield Hinata hears a roar and she knows with a shiver up her spine that it is Choza.

Beautiful blondes in every shade (and a few brunettes for good measure) wander the battlefield, enticing, entrancing, ripping out hearts and sucking chakra, memories, souls. They grab their prey and climb into the sky, as close to the stars as the Sunbird clan before they let go and laugh.

There are blazes of orange and black and green, Sasuke and Naruto tag-teaming to open a path for Sakura’s fists. The Uchiha are an angry wave, holding Madara to task with assault after assault, bringing a Curse of Hatred against their Curse of Hatred. The fourth Hokage lashes her chains.

Hinata fights and she fights, she kills and she retreats, she goes forward and she kills again and in her perfect bubble of vision there are faces everywhere and she can’t see him.

Then she does.

He’s with Shikamaru and Ino, because of course he is, there’s loyalty in his bones like there’s blood in his teeth, each one sharp and white.

His horns are like his father’s, big and curved. There is an amber sheen to them that Choza’s lack.

Chouji opens his mouth as wide as it can go and he bites his opponent’s head clean off. He spits it out and turns to become the human boulder, ploughing a path for the reinforcements and picking up an injured ninja mid-spin. When he comes up standing he runs his precious cargo to the medics behind the barrier and takes a moment to gnaw through a detonation-tag laced rope that someone left behind before Shikamaru is at his back and they’re running forth again, Ino flying above them hellbent for bedlam. 

_There he is,_ Hinata thinks to herself between one gentle fist strike and the next.

_There’s my monster._

—

Their losses are great and their hearts are heavy but they’ve won.

Hinata strides through the cleanup camp like she owns it, mustering confidence she probably stole from Ino. Not a single non-human combatant has put their genjutsu back on; it takes too much chakra and there just isn’t time.

Still she knows Chouji. She’d know him anywhere.

When she comes striding up he turns from her just like Choza did all those years before. Trying to keep her from seeing, trying to preserve- something.

Hinata puts her hand on his shoulder and when he turns to look at her she says, “Never do that again.”

She kisses him square on the mouth and there is the not small matter of the blood and the gore still sticking everywhere, yes, but it doesn’t matter. Those hands as big as her head are curled about her trim waist. There is the barest feeling of pressure from the tips of his claws. 

Her father will probably be angry when she corners him with her demands in his sickbed, but her mother will be proud.

When she breaks the kiss Chouji looks at her.

“Nice horns.” She says. He laughs that big deep-bellied laugh, all the louder for the allowances of his cheeks’ skin flaps, and Hinata knows that everything is going to be okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> According to an interview with Kishimoto a hundred years ago, if a Byakugan user and a Sharingan user married the resulting offspring would in fact have one dojutsu in either eye. Ko is (I think) an anime-specific member of the Hyuuga clan whose main job seemed to be keeping Hinata from unsavory types like tiny blonde orphans. Hinata’s mother is entirely made up but there’s no good reason for her to be dead so she ain’t.


	16. The One That (Almost) Got Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Asuma and Chouji have a difficult conversation.

"Chouji, we need to talk." 

Chouji winced and Asuma wondered, as he sat down beside his student at the low stone bench, how often those words had heralded a lecture or a scolding that centered on exactly what they were about to discuss. 

"I messed up." Chouji said quietly. "I know." 

"Yes, you did," Asuma acknowledged, because there was no point in dancing around it. Chouji preferred directness. "You had a perfect opportunity to take your prey out and you didn't. You're lucky Shikamaru could compensate for you, but you won't always be so lucky and your teammates won't always be there." 

Chouji shrank in on himself. 

"Chouji." Asuma said kindly. "What happened? Your hunt was going so well." 

"You called him prey." Chouji said. 

"That's what he was." Asuma said. "It was a feeding mission. One I asked for, specifically, and your performance has been found wanting." 

"He wasn't prey." Chouji said, wrapping his arms around his knees. "He was a person." 

"A person who had to be eliminated. "Asuma said firmly. "And if not by you, then by another ninja from Konoha. His body would have been embalmed, if anything was left. He'd have been burned. Wasted." 

"How can you SAY that?" Chouji whipped his head around and fixed Asuma with a slit-eyed stare. "How can you, you sit there and say that like was just- just- what did he even do?! What did he do to deserve-" 

Chouji cut himself off and stared down at his hands. 

"What did he do to deserve to get eaten?" Chouji finished. 

"Nothing terrible." Asuma said, because it was the truth; the target had been a farmer. Classic case of wrong place, wrong time. He'd seen ANBU unmasked, he'd heard names he shouldn't have heard. Those at fault had been taken to task for their lapses but rules were rules and so were secrets. The man had to go. 

"But he still had to die?" Chouji countered. 

"Whether to feed you or not, yes." Asuma acknowledged. 

"I never asked to be this way." Chouji whispered. "None of us did." 

"No, you didn't." Asuma said. "That doesn't change what you are, Chouji, and what you are-" 

"Is a monster." Chouji said. 

"I was going to say 'growing oni' but yes."

"Dad would have killed him." Chouji said, gathering his knees up under him. 

"Without hesitation." Asuma agreed. 

"Dad's mad at me." 

"Your father is not mad at you, Chouji." Asuma said. "He is scared for you." A beat. "I am, too." 

"Why?" Chouji asked. 

"Because," Asuma said carefully, "your kindness is a two-edged sword. It's your greatest gift. You have more compassion in your little finger than most people can dream of. But." Asuma leaned back on his palms and gazed up at the blue sky. "but it's also a great weakness, because you light yourself on fire to keep others warm." 

"How can I protect a village full of humans when I eat humans, Sensei?" Chouji asked. "How, how can I justify that? Shikamaru, Ino, they can do it. Their clans let people live all the time but we can't. I CAN'T." Chouji put his head in his hands. "Others die so I can live. How is that fair?" 

"It isn't." Asuma said. "There's very little in life that is fair, Chouji. War takes the lives of children. That isn't fair. Hunger starves out entire villages- that isn't fair. A volcano explodes and wipes out civilizations. Do you think the volcano cares?" 

"I'm not a volcano." Chouji said. "I'm a person." 

"You're an oni." Asuma said sharply. His student winced again and Asuma shook his head. "No. Genjutsu off, right now." 

It was his 'that's an order' voice and Chouji obeyed it instinctively. Asuma took Chouji's claws in his hands. "Look at me, Chouji." 

Reluctantly, his student did. His horns had gained another recent layer.

"You," Asuma said carefully, "Are Chouji Akimichi, sixteenth heir of the Akimichi clan. You are an Oni of unsurpassed lineage and you defend Konoha just like every Clan head before you. You're a kind soul, a hard worker, and you eat human flesh. These things won't change, Chouji, no matter how much you may want them to." 

"But what if-" Chouji sighed. "Never mind." He whispered miserably. 

"It isn't possible, Chouji." Asuma said. "You know that. You're an obligate." 

Years of testing had proved it. The Akimichi could and did supplement their bodies with the same food humans ate, but in the end what kept them going was not beef or pork, ramen or rice. 

Asuma let Chouji's hands go. "No, you didn't ask to be born an oni any more than Shikamaru asked to be a shiki or Ino asked to be a yurei. People will die so that you can live and not all of them will be enemies."

"So I'm supposed to just accept it?" Chouji asked. "Accept that every person I meet or work for or stand beside could be a meal someday?" 

"Anyone." Asuma said firmly. "Even me." 

Chouji's eyes went wide and horrified. "Sensei-" 

"No." Asuma said. "Listen to me, Chouji, and listen carefully." He made sure to maintain eye contact as he said, "if I die in battle, and you and Ino and Shikamaru are beside me and there is a choice, you'd better take whatever I leave." 

"But you're my teacher." Chouji said. 

"And I care for you, Chouji." Asuma said evenly. "All three of you. If my death would help you live, would help you come home to keep fighting for our village, I want you to do what you have to."

"I don't know if I could." Chouji said. 

"And it's okay to not know," Asuma acknowledged, "but you need to be willing to consider it." 

"I wish I could turn it off." Chouji said. "Caring. Like the older ones do." 

Asuma let go of Chouji's hands. "They don't turn it off, Chouji." He assured his student. "Experience has given them wisdom you don't have yet. That's all." 

They sat in companionable quiet for a few minutes before Chouji said, "Asuma-sensei?" 

"Yes?" 

Fair's fair. If- if you die, and I have to, I'll eat you." Chouji forced himself to say the words and Asuma appreciated it. "But if I die first you need to keep my horns." 

Asuma's eyebrows rose to his hairline. "Chouji-" 

"They'd just make Ino and Shikamaru sad." Chouji said. "And we have enough horns at the compound, we don't need mine." 

Asuma laughed. "Alright." He said. "It's a deal." He took Chouji's clawed hand and shook. 

"It's never going to be easy, is it?" Chouji asked. 

Asuma shook his head. "The moment it becomes too easy something is wrong." He said. "and I expect you to react accordingly." He stood. "Come on. We have a mission in the morning." 

Chouji nodded and left the stone bench behind, following Asuma into the evening.


	17. Down By The River

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Madara and Hashirama, on the hunt for allies, have finally been granted audiences with the three leaders of the Triad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set in the founding era, so founding OCs!

It has taken them nearly two years to secure guaranteed face to face interaction with the leaders of the Triad.

There will be three meetings, the pretty blonde who has been their contact explains. Over two days and one night.

Hashirama opens his mouth to comment on how very strange that is but Madara gives him that Look and he shuts up. They need the Triad. Combined, the three clans have nearly double the manpower of the Senju and the Uchiha. Their skills are vast, their resources secure, their networks of trade impressively intact despite years of war.

Most importantly, they have been united for longer than either Madara or Hashirama have been alive.

They need this, and so the venerated Heads of the Senju and the Uchiha agree.

Three meetings.

Two days, one night.

Easy.

—

The first meeting is held in the morning, in the soft shade of a large tree by a bend in the river. There is a tea service and there is a woman.

She is lovely, with eyes the same shade as a perfect summer day. Her hair is golden and light, gathered back from her face. Her kimono is well cut and expensive. Hashirama thinks, idyly, that his father would say to make such a woman a warrior would be a waste of beauty.

She bows to them, the exact degree of one Clan Leader to another, and says, “I am Yamanaka Inoko.”

Madara and Hashirama both sit.

It takes a moment and Madara spots it first.

Inoko pours tea with all the elegance of a noble and as she does strands of her hair lift. They twine gently before the two men, parting and twisting. There is no wind to move them. 

“Your father, Senju-san,” Inoko says as she puts the teapot down, “would have been an easy meal, I think.” 

Her hair wraps into a single braid and curls around her arm. 

Madara’s fingers are twitching, desperate for shuriken he has left behind because this Important.

Hashirama says, wide eyed, “can _all_ of your hair do that?”

Inoko laughs. “Oh, Senju-san, you do know how to speak to women.”

She rises up, up, and hovers elegantly above them by a foot or so. Hashirama waits for Madara’s sharingan to shine upon what they see. A quick shake of his head and the Uchiha confirms that it is no illusion.

“Bakemono.” Madara whispers.

She smiles. “Yurei, my dear, yurei. And don't you ever call us namanari it's rude." 

Madara's fingers are clenching in the grass. Inoko glances at them and then at Hashirama. 

If you can’t handle this,” She says, “however will you deal with my friends?”

She laces her needle-long fingers together. “We’ve heard your demands quite patiently, Senju-san. It’s our turn to let you hear ours.”

“We’re all ears.” Hashirama says.

—

They are shaken but they do their best not to show it.

“Did you have any inkling?” Madara asks Hashirama in the suite of rooms they have been using for negations set far from the main houses. That used to be a small grievance.

Now it is a blessing.

Hashirama can only shake his head. They both try to sleep. Neither manages.

—

The second meeting takes place near midnight. There are lanterns strung up in the tree now, and sitting beneath it is a woman. She is not as lovely as Inoko but she is sharp, red-on-black eyes taking them in with the span of a breath. She wears a deerskin coat and whatever is in the cup she is holding, it is red. 

She smiles and shows long, pointed fangs. She blows out a smoke ring from her pipe and says, “Inoko said you spook easily, Senju-san.”

“A regrettable truth.” Hashirama admits.

“Bakemono.” Madara says it louder than he did to Inoko, accusatory. She looks at Madara, puts her cup of blood to her lips and drinks deeply. 

The shiki licks the extra from her mouth in a businesslike fashion and sits up a little straighter. “I am Nara Shikana. Do either of you play shogi?” She gestures to the board on the rock where Inoko had her tea service. 

They nod.

She smiles again. “Then perhaps this will be less painful than I thought.”

—

The third meeting takes place in the warm afternoon and both Madara and Hashirama are searched, three times.

“Is this necessary?” Hashirama asks. The pretty blonde gives him a look.

They go down to the tree.

Madara puts a hand on Hashirama’s chest and his sharingan are shining in the next moment.

“Look all you want, Uchiha-san.” The monster sitting there says. “It won’t change.”

He grins, and his grin is not like Inoko’s and it is not like Shikana’s. It is bigger, it is meaner, and it has far more teeth.

“Unless I want it to.”

A breath of wind steals over the water, wiping the fear sweat neither ninja will admit is gathering. It curls about the great black horns on the monster’s head, ruffling his thick mane of hair.

The oni stands and he bows. It's the politest bow either ninja has ever seen. 

“I,” he said, “Am Akimichi Chouga.”

The monster melts away and before them stands a man, tall and broad, big-bellied with a cheerful air about his shabby dress.

“We have much to discuss.” Chouga says. 

—

 

Centuries.

That is how long they have been together- the Yamanaka, the Nara, the Akimichi. One takes the mind, one drinks the blood, the last takes all that is left and in this manner they have survived beyond other such creatures. Wars are good for them. Food is plentiful. 

“I thought you all just had a horrible skin condition.” Hashirama admits to the three monsters who sit across the fire. Inoko laughs, Chouga smiles, Shikana snorts.

Madara is silent.

The talk runs long into the night, into the next day, into weeks. There are arguments, valid ones made on both sides. 

Madara is trying but Hashirama can see the cracks.

“You might not be hard to feed in times of war,” He says to Shikana, “but we hope for peace.”

“And should peace come, we’ll deal with it then.” Shikana says. “but this is not a peaceful time, Uchiha-san.”

It certainly isn’t.

In the end the written contracts are signed by all parties, even Madara.

The Triad will come.

Some clan members refuse and are allowed to remain but the bulk of their people- “Not all like us, don’t you worry your pretty little head, Uchiha-san-” will travel to the chosen site.

“Tobirama,” Hashirama says with a feverish gleam in his eye, “is going to be furious.”

Madara thinks of Hashirama’s brother and believes furious might not be a strong enough word.

“What,” he says to Hashirama, “are we going to do about the Hyuuga?”

“Do they like baking?” Chouga asks.

Inoko laughs, Shikana smokes. The tree at the bend of the river drinks deep and grows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> namanari are female demons in Japanese mythos who are altogether human looking save for small horns. They're known for their use of dark magic.


	18. A Tale of Two Choujis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just because no one's left the Akimichi in thirty years doesn't mean no one ever LEFT.

Chouji is named for an Uncle he has never met. 

He knows this but he doesn’t ask about it, because asking brings his father pain; and to be the Patriarch of the Akimichi is already pain, already balancing on a fine thread liable to snap with the slightest breeze. Chouji thinks he knows all he really needs to know, anyway. 

Chouza had a brother and that brother left. There was no fight. There was no disagreement. He simply asked to leave, and Chouza let him. 

Ino has told Chouji that she thinks this story is both typical of his clan and also sort of lame. Chouji agrees with her, but he’s also glad she’s able to point it out. 

Shikamaru just asks, “If thinking about this Uncle makes your Dad unhappy, why was the separation so peaceful?” 

Of course Shikamaru asks the hard questions, because that’s what Shikamaru does- he thinks beyond the horizon. Still it’s not the kind of question that Chouji needs answered. 

Once there was a Chouji, and he left. 

Then another Chouji was born. 

That’s that. 

—

Of course it’s more complicated than that and as Chouji grows he comes to know it. There are very few pictures of his Uncle. Those he does see show a typical Akimichi- hair dark brown like Chouji’s grandmother, a wide and sharp-toothed smile like every other Old Blood in the clan.

His seals look like tridents, or spread crow talons. His horns curve like Chouza’s, like Chouji’s, with an extra little flourish at the end, their tips sticking straight out on either side of his head instead of back. 

Great Uncle Torifu claims that Chouji could take a human apart faster than any other Oni born. 

Cousin Chicho recalls that Chouji was a bit of a prankster, good natured. 

Sakuya pours and mixes and measures and tells Chouji that his uncle was a damned brat of a troublemaker, much less sweet than you, bun. 

The twins- Touma and Douma both- are quiet when they are asked. It is Douma who says, “Your namesake was-unique.” 

_Unique,_ in their clan, is a good way to say _bloodmad._

Chouji feels his uncle hover over him like a shadow but he still does not ask his father. 

—

After Jirobu- after they find him in pieces in a back alley, just one casualty amongst many in the attempted Sound invasion of Konoha, beat back by the combined forces of Leaf and Sand- Chouza sits his son down. 

“Your uncle,” he says, each word coming slow, “was unhappy.” 

Unhappy with being told when to hunt and who. Unhappy with how they were expected to act- jolly, harmless. Unhappy with the slow and inevitable demise of their kind amongst humans, often thought about but never spoken of. 

Unhappy with being called a man when he thought himself a monster. 

“He didn’t attack anyone.” Chouza hastens to tell his son. “He never hurt a citizen of Konoha.” 

But. 

The but hangs in the air. But he could have. But he would have. But leaving- without the hitai-ate, at the mercy of the Hunters who walked the world- was better than being drawn and quartered by his own Clan after that inevitable attack. 

“We haven’t heard from him since.” 

Chouza assumes his brother is dead. He has no reason to think otherwise. No word has come of Oni attacks and word does come because the Sarutobi still carry their fearsome reputation, for all they grow teachers for monsters now. 

Chouji knocks his horns against his father’s, and says, “You must miss him.” 

Chouza can only smile through the tears he won’t let fall and says, “I do.” 

—

Once there was a Chouji, and he left.

Now there is a Chouji who has vowed to stay.

Maybe his reasons for staying- his teammates, his teacher, his love of his village- were once the same reasons the first Chouji left. 

Maybe someday he’ll go bloodmad, too. 

Then again, maybe he won’t. 

Chouji thinks that he’ll meet his uncle out in the world. He doesn’t believe the first Chouji is dead. 

What will happen then? 

Who knows. 

The sun comes up and it goes down. Akimichi Chouji- the second Oni to bear that name in less than a hundred years- does his best to live up to it.


	19. Unpalatable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danzo has become a problem that the Monster Dads solve like monsters do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're talking Danzo so some unfortunate imagery here. Be cautious if you're easily triggered by thinking about the unholy nastiness he could get into. Also, you know, the Monster Dads eating him. There's that too.

Of the three of them, it would be fair to say that Inoichi suffered the most. 

It wasn’t exactly a walk in the park for his friends, of course. Shikaku had been leery of Danzo’s blood- he’d wanted to test it but there hadn’t been time and so he had grimly told his companions to tell his wife he thought he might love her before he went for the jugular.

Chouza had said something similar before he started on Danzo’s corpse. He left nothing- no stringy gristle, no bones, no hair. Danzo was more than enough to feed three juvenile Akimichi but Chouza would not hear of letting anything so poisoned near his clan’s children. 

Inoichi, though. 

Poor Inoichi. 

He fed first in a pattern old as time because a braindead victim can't fight shiki and oni teeth. Danzo struggled uselessly against the kagemane that had speared him through the chest and to the wall of the deepest darkest pit he’d dug himself to hide the children he stole from up above. 

A pit he’d have kept filling, if he hadn’t tried for Yamanaka Fu. 

If Chouza hadn’t decided that he could afford to take the fall himself. 

If Shikaku and Inoichi hadn’t found out, and told their Cho on no uncertain terms that if he thought he was going to commit the twin crimes of assassination and high treason alone he had another god damn thing coming. 

If the perfect opportunity hadn't come along when another monster- a distant cousin, perhaps?- was raging above. 

Inoichi-tenth head of that old and venerated Clan which had produced the temptation of Fu- looked into Danzo Shimura’s furious eyes and took everything. 

Danzo’s thoughts tasted like sour honey. _Dark-light-dark-blood-death-no-no-please-no-someone save me-why-why-_

and echoed back always like a demented refrain, _For Konoha. For Konoha._

Inoichi drank it all because they had promised one another they would, take everything and leave nothing for Clan Shimura or the Monument of the Fallen. Danzo would have no body to burn. 

Memories filtered through Inoichi's teeth and tastebuds, twisting around like the dead man was still living. Murder-organizing missions designed to kill ninja Danzo deemed worthless- testing so much testing- plans, written and spoken and scribed upon his body in ink that was curdling in Chouza’s stomach. 

Madness had a specific taste and it stuck to the roof of Inoichi’s mouth as he dry-heaved in the corner. They left Danzo Shimura's bloody smear and went from room to room. Chouza ripped doors from hinges turned his diamond-hard back against the traps embedded in the wood. Shikaku caught fleeing ninja with his shadow, smothered some, dragged others into the dark. Inoichi's eyes were luminous blue lamps, catching whatever fool didn't think twice. His gaze was best for getting the children out of confinement without questions. 

By the time an Aburame swarm found them, there were fourteen children between the ages of five and thirteen all following Chouza with drawn faces and hollow eyes. Shikaku had almost finished stuffing the contents of the labs into his already overburdened shadow and was looking green for the effort of holding the jutsu. 

The leaders of the Triad were soon surrounded by ANBU and Inoichi was still pale as death. 

When Sarutobi appeared, exhausted and streaked in rock dust, face drawn in sorrow, there wasn’t a man alive who could hold Inoichi. 

He leapt upon the Third with an unholy shriek, tightened his fingers with their sharp black nails on the man’s neck and screamed ‘how could you how could you you knew _you knew’_ over and over until Chouza pried him off because no one else dared get near. The two ANBU that tried were wrapped in long yellow hair, strangled half to death before Shikaku could free them. 

“AT LEAST YOU KNOW WE’RE MONSTERS!” Inoichi howled as Chouza dragged him away up into the light and chaos of their home in smoking nine-tailed ruin, away from the tombs Danzo had built to hide his rot. “AT LEAST WE DON’T PRETEND!” 

Outside, he puked what human food was in his stomach. Chouza carried him home. 

No official reprimand for the attack ever came from the office of the Hokage. After Minato was buried, the investigation that was opened saw all three Clan Heads of the Triad cleared of wrongdoing; they were acting for the benefit of Konoha. 

Sarutobi Hiruzen declared Namikaze Kushina the Fifth and she was inducted with her son at her breast, eyes still raw and red as her hair. 

The fourteen children were looked after as best they could be. Others were sought out using intel from the ninja Shikaku had trapped. They were negotiated with, released, retired, killed. 

Diseased roots being clipped in a desperate attempt to save the whole tree. 

It would take the birth of his daughter for Inoichi to at last sleep through a night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really don't like Danzo. 
> 
> Is that, like, clear?


	20. Lone Oni and Tengu- an Elder Chouji Tale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chouji, secondborn of Choumaru, has left Konoha.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alert: This chapter is OC heavy, and the titular Chouji is our Chouji's uncle, who was said to depart in the short 'A Tale of Two Choujis'. From now on any shorts involving Elder Chouji will have the caveat 'an Elder Chouji Tale' after their chapter title.

He would eat well tonight.

He’d been tracking them for days. They were a small group, only five in number, and they moved quickly for being civilians.

It didn’t take long to ascertain that these were not civilians.

That…made him feel a little better. He hated that it did, but he had given up the easy luxury of knowing that his victims were destined for death, marked whether he was their end or not.

At the moment the knowledge soothed him but it didn’t blunt his hunger.

He waited for the perfect moment. There always was one because humans were predictable.

Sure enough, it came when the biggest of their number, already half drunk, swaggered off into the bushes to have a piss. There was no challenge in slitting his throat.

The oni came up on the smart one second, the leader who wore a blue sash. That one went down without a fight, windpipe crushed by his claws and the fall of his body muffled by the thick carpet of leaf litter on the the edge of their chosen clearing.

Number two wore glasses and she managed to squeak before he closed his teeth around the back of her neck. A single crushing bite and she wasn’t a concern anymore.

Numbers three and four got wise. They lit torches, pulled pilfered explosive tags from hidden pockets and readied kunai with crookedly sharpened edges. None of this helped them. They died screaming but as deep in the forest as they had camped, there was no one else around to hear but the animals.

The animals were smart enough to stay away.

He ate the big one and the woman, the first because he needed the meat and the second because he’d always preferred the flavor. For a moment, sitting at the fire his meal had built, he felt a pang. His older brother would be able to identify where each of the dead bodies came from- could tell their blood types, their favorite foods, what illnesses they might have had or poisons they were carrying.

Chouza always had a much more delicate palate.

The other three bodies would have to go to waste and that was a shame but leaving them alive simply hadn’t been an option. The last thing he needed was word of attacks getting to the wrong ears.

It was during the cleanup- the burning of the bodies with a fire jutsu, the sorting and appraising of their goods- that he heard a sound come from the wagon.

He paused in his inspection, tilted his head.

The sound came again- a little muffled thump.

He carefully stood and inhaled deeply. He smelled wood and blood, the scent markings of a fox that had passed by a day or so before, and bird.

The smell of bird was both distinct and very strong.

Carefully, cautiously, he approached the wagon. His meals had styled themselves as traveling entertainers. It was a disguise that would hold under the inspection of a village’s security force, but not a trained ninja. He knew about the drugs in the packets in the false bottom, of the rare blue paper smuggled from the Country of Birds. He knew about the cache of pilfered jewelry- mostly silver- which had been sewn into the woman’s bedroll.

The thump came again.

He strode to the wagon and threw the tarp off.

The eyes that blinked at him from the tight, chakra-woven net were as inhuman as his own.

“You can’t eat me I’m too bony.” The captive inside said, trying to be brave. The way his scarlet nose twitched told the oni otherwise.

The oni pinched the bridge of his nose. He’d only stopped tracking the group for a few hours the night before, picked them up that morning.

How the HELL had they had they time to kidnap a-

“How did they trick you, tengu?” He asked.

“I wasn’t tricked!” the little yokai snapped. Then he curled up. “I fell.”

“You fell.” He said flatly.

“I fell, okay?! I was too far away from the nest and a wind current caught me-”

“Seven hells you’re a _child._ ” the oni said, eyes wide.

“I’m a hundred and three I’m not a child!” the tengu snapped.

The oni looked behind him at the fire, burning low. “Do you know what direction you came from?” A thought. “And how far were you pulled?”

“I- southeast? And.” The tengu looked chagrined. “I’m not sure. Pretty far off course.” 

Southeast could only mean Mount Iwaki. It was easily three days’ travel as a ninja ran, perhaps two weeks at a civilian’s steady pace. Quite a journey for anyone to make, much less a juvenile tengu. the oni smelled a lie, but there were more important things to be concerned with.

Like that net. 

The oni leaned down. “Hold still.”

The tengu did as ordered and the Oni grabbed hold of the net. The embedded chakra began to burn but despite the quality of the jutsu (stolen? Most likely) there was no leaving a mark on diamond-hard skin. The oni adjusted his claws and he tore. The net fell to pieces.

The tengu carefully shifted back in the wagon. He eyed the camp- and the piles of ash that had once been his captors- with trepidation. “Thank you.” He said. “You’re not going to eat me?”

“I eat humans, boy, not birds.” The oni said. “What were they going to do with you?”

“I don’t know.” The tengu said, hopping up on the edge of the wagon and cautiously stretching his wings. “The man said something about a high price.”

The oni growled, low and dangerous. The tengu flinched.

“You didn’t fall off course.” The oni said. “You were running away.”

“No I-”

The oni gave the tengu a look. He wilted a little. “Yeah I was.” He whispered.

The oni grinned, a wide grin that stretched the flaps of skin on his cheeks. “That’s okay. I’m running, too. Is there anyone worried about you?”

The tengu shifted a little from foot to foot, talons making tiny gouges in the wood. “My older sister, maybe. The others in our Parliament probably don’t care much.”

Left unsaid, ‘or they would have come to find me.’

“You’re in luck.” The oni said lightly. “I’m traveling southeast.”

The tengu gave him a suspicious look. “No you aren’t.”

“Well I am now.” The oni said. “but first-” he shot the ashes a look. “I want to know what they intended to do with you.”

“Can’t ask a dead human questions.” The tengu pointed out.

“Not without a Yamanaka, anyway.” The oni murmured.

“A what?”

“Nothing. Can you do anything about those feathers, kid?”

“’m not a KID.” The tengu said, and twitched his nose.

The bright scarlet of his skin faded, the feathers and claws disappeared. In their place a long-nosed boy with black hair the texture of straw sat on the wagon’s edge and glared at the oni.

“It’ll have to do.” The oni said.

“What like you can do better?” The tengu asked.

The oni lifted an eyebrow and a moment later the tengu, eyes wide, said, “Okay, that’s better.”

“Eat humans, remember?” The completely ordinary man with the crow-talon marks on his cheeks offered his arms. The tengu-boy looked at them.

“I’m going to find out who was going to buy a tengu and I’m going to eat them,” the man said, “with or without your help. But if you want to make it home, you’re going to need more than luck and being able to fly. I saved you, and according to oni law that makes me responsible for you at least until I can get you back to your parliament.”

The tengu bit his lip. “You’re really not going to eat me?”

“No birds.” the man said.

“I’m not a bird. I’m Sutoku. Iwaki Sutoku.” The tengu-boy offered his own arms and the man lifted him up onto his shoulder. “Hey, I can feel your horns!” the boy said.

“Careful not to hang on to them too tight or you’ll mess with my genjutsu.” The man said.

“Your gen-what?”

The man chuckled and Sutoku could feel it through his bones. “You have a lot to learn, Iwaki Sutoku.”

The tengu huffed. “Easy for you to say. So teach me something, man-eater. What’s your name?”

“Me?”

The oni neatly kicked a cloud of dirt onto the remains of the fire.

“Chouji. Akimichi Chouji.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Meet Elder Chouji and his ~~adopted son~~ pet bird Iwaki Sutoku! 
> 
> Tengu have a lot of different origins in Japanese lore and religious myth, so like the other monsters in Bakemono I’m mixing and matching what works best. In general they are acceptably birdlike or shaped, are affiliated by and large with weather patterns/wind and rain, and dwell on mountaintops. 
> 
> Sutoku’s family being called a parliament comes from the fact that a group of owls can be called a parliament. In this ‘verse, all Tengu give their last name as their mountain of birth- hence, Iwaki Sutoku. Mount Iwaki IS a genuine mountain in Japan.


	21. Autumn Came (How I Met Your Mother, ChouzaxReiko)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reiko is arguably both an OC and a canon character; as Chouza's wife and Chouji's mother we know she exists but she got no development in the manga and her one appearance in a filler episode should hardly count.

Every autumn the Oni from Konoha would come through the valley and every autumn Reiko fell a little more in love. 

It started when she was a child, old enough at last to go with her grandmother to the festival. There were People from all over, in all shapes and sizes. Humans, too, sometimes, or Human-People with their parents. There were tengu in the air and bakaneko prowling the streets. There were elegant lily-kappa women in the river and reed-kappa women on the bank. Everywhere there were lanterns and it was the lanterns that Reiko loved most, their myriad of colors like flying jewels. 

She saw the man she would marry for the first time holding a purple lantern, walking beside his father and brother. 

Reiko’s grandmother had pulled her out of the way, murmured respectfully and bowed and nudged her granddaughter to do the same. Reiko did and when she straightened up again she saw the young oni with the red hair smiling at her. 

He had a pretty smile, teeth symmetrical and perfectly locked together. 

Those, her grandmother explained to her, were the Head of the Akimichi Clan and his sons- as close to nobility as their kind got. 

Reiko didn’t much care about how noble the red-haired oni was. She just knew she liked his smile. 

—

Every Autumn the Oni from Konoha would come through and Reiko would be there to greet them. They grew and so did she. Sometimes the group varied in number but always the red-haired one was with them, he and his darker-haired brother. 

Their names were Chouza and Chouji. Reiko’s cousin laughed at that. 

“Butterflies?” She teased. “How can you trust a man’s teeth to be sharp when he’s named after an insect?” 

“Butterflies are perfect,” Reiko had argued, and held Chouza’s name close. 

—

Every autumn Reiko found an excuse and every autumn so did Chouza. 

They walked the winding paths around the village with lanterns held high. Chouza told her of Konoha, of his brother’s antics and his friends back home. 

Reiko told him about dying cloth and caring for the storehouses. She told him of all the births and all the deaths (because even where People lived, there were deaths) and she told him of the hunts. 

“I’d like very much,” Chouza said, “to hunt with you.”

She smiled. “Why, Lord Chouza,” she said, “those are engagement words.” 

He scratched the back of his head and looked clueless and endearing and said, “I suppose they are.” 

—

“I’m a little mad he got to you first.” Chouji admitted- dear, deadly Chouji with his wild eyes and the holes in his pants from kneading his claws so often. 

Reiko put another bag of rice in the wagon she was filling for the outer homesteads. “We would make a terrible match.” She said. 

“Oh no doubt about it.” Chouji cheerfully agreed as he helped, “but it would have been fun as hell!” 

Reiko smiled. “Maybe.” 

—

War came.

War always came but this time it came to the mouth of the valley, spilled in. Most of the ninja were human and they died easily enough but some were People, and they fought hard. 

The village fought back harder and many perished. 

One of these was Reiko’s grandmother, torn limb-from-limb before the village gate. 

When the Akimichi came that autumn they weren’t alone. There were shiki, red eyes sharp, and yurei whose feet only barely touched the ground. 

The invaders were pushed back and Reiko organized dwindling supplies, ignoring mutters about who would replace their departed village chieftain. 

“Let me help,” Chouza said and Reiko let him. Together they fetched and carried and Reiko said to him, “My grandmother is dead,” without tears. 

Chouza ran a thumb over the streaks on his cheeks and said, “My father is too.” He didn’t cry either. 

—

Autumn came and the festival was small but it was still held. Reiko’s cousin took the maple kamon their grandmother had worn with pride and did her best not to look guilty while she did it. 

“It’s okay.” Reiko told her. “You’ll do a fine job.” 

“But you’re the proper heir!” 

“I’m not staying.” 

Autumn came and so did Chouza, claws sharpened to fine points and teeth perfectly fit together in a gentle deadly smile. 

When he left in the springtime, he took Reiko with him and she wore the Akimichi kamon on her sleeves. 

—

Autumn came and Reiko had a baby. 

He was a fine little beast of an oni, already showing proper horn growth and sitting well in his sling. This time when Reiko walked through the village there were people bowing to her. 

“You never get used to that.” Chouza muttered. 

“That’s not a bad thing,” Reiko said to him and made sure her little Chouji could see the lanterns. 

Chouza smiled his perfect smile at her and nipped the edge of her horn. 

Chouji giggled and clapped. He reached for the flying jewels in the air, soft claws closing on beauty intangible. 

—

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fun fact: Akimichi means ‘autumn road’ and refers largely to the rows and rows of food stalls at festivals. 
> 
> Yes, this short insinuates that there are monster-populated towns and villages in the Bakemono 'verse, something I hope to explore a little more with Elder Chouji's story.


	22. A Delicate Affair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A young Maito Gai makes it onto Akimichi Lands without having had the crucial Triad Class, and sees something he shouldn’t.

Chouza could feel a headache coming on.

In front of him sat a gangly kid who was starting- finally- to form up into the ninja he would someday be. A splendid ninja, Chouza had no doubt about that; regardless of what others had and would say, Maito Gai was going to be something spectacular. 

Right now, though, he was a pain in his teacher’s ass. 

“Um, Sensei?” Gai shifted a little on his cushion. “Shouldn’t we be looking for the monster?” 

Chouza didn’t flinch at the word. “There is no monster, Gai.” 

“But I saw it!” Gai said, eyes wide and affronted. “Sensei I did!” 

“And I believe you, Gai, but there is no monster. At least- not the way you’re thinking.” 

Gai tilted his head, hair swinging a little. He’d let it grow long since his father died. Chouza wasn’t inclined to mention it to the boy until it became a mission hazard. “Sensei?” 

“Did you have the Triad class, Gai?” Chouza asked, desperately seeking some way out of this conversation and acknowledging without shame that if this was the moment he lost a student, like many other Akimichi senseis before, it would break his heart. 

“Triad class? No.” Gai shook his head. “I was a graduation alternate, remember? I must have missed it- is it important? Is it training?!” Gai almost stood up in his sudden passionate fervor but Chouza motioned for him to stay still. 

That was right. Gai had been an alternate, his lackluster skills in genjutsu and ninjutsu holding him back. He’d only been told he would graduate the day of the ceremony- and the Triad class was always held the day before. 

There were protocols to be filled before Chouza could explain any of what his student had seen, but without Gai’s father to be his second it would be difficult. Unless- 

“Gai, do you know where Kakashi is right now?” 

Gai nodded. “Training field 5.” 

“Let’s go find him.” Chouza said. 

“Alright,” Gai looked bewildered but he stood and followed his sensei out of the mysteriously empty Akimichi compound. 

Sure enough Kakashi was on training field 5 practicing shurikenjutsu. When he looked up and saw Gai and Chouza he stopped. 

“Kakashi.” Chouza called before Gai could lose himself in habitual excitement and challenge his rival. “May I ask you a favor?” 

“Yes, Akimichi-sama.” Kakashi said. 

“-san will be fine.” Chouza said evenly. “Kakashi, I need you to be Gai’s second for a short while.” 

Both of the young ninja furrowed their brows. A Second was for situations where a ninja might need emotional support or even backup, like in a sanctioned fight. It was an odd request to make of a ninja so comparatively young. 

Still Kakashi nodded and Chouza settled with the two genin out of sight of the main road. He looked to Kakashi and said, “Gai missed the Triad class.” 

Kakashi’s eye widened in understanding and minor alarm. Gai said, “What? What is this class? For missing it I will do one thousand-” 

“Gai that isn’t necessary.” Chouza said. “The monster you saw was my brother Chouji.” 

There was a long moment of silence. 

“Sensei I don’t understand.” Gai said. 

“I know.” Chouza said. He looked at Kakashi. Kakashi shifted next to Gai, prepared to grab him if necessary, and nodded. “It will work more efficiently if I show you.”

“Show me-” Gai began but he shut up a second later, gone tense as tightened trip wire. 

It was his teacher's eyes blinking calmly at him, Chouza's clothing and Chouza's hitai-ate. It was Chouza's red hair and Chouza's blue streak seals. 

That was where the similarities between man and monster ended. 

“Sensei?” He asked carefully. 

“This,” Chouza said, watching Gai’s eyes go dark and quietly packing away his growing sorrow, “is the Triad class.” 

—

“I’m sorry, Chouza.” Chouji said that night. He wasn’t looking at his feet when he said it which meant he really did mean he was sorry. “I didn’t know he was there.” 

“I guess I trained him decently, then,” Chouza said. 

“Bro- he’ll come out of it. The kid’s a walking peptalk.” 

Chouza shrugged. “If he doesn’t, he doesn’t. I’ve informed the Hokage. He’ll shuffle the teams.” 

“Not the point.” Chouji said. “You’ve said it a hundred times, Gai’s strong. He’s strong in the real way. He just needs time.” 

Chouza sighed. “Maybe.” 

It had been such a stupid thing- one little hole in the defensive line on their lands, because Goki had left just a little too early and Hachi hadn’t been there to relieve exactly on time. Gai had probably thought the gate was open to the public. He had no reason to think otherwise. Everyone knew some of the best climbing cliffs in the village were on Akimichi territory. To Gai they were practically a neon sign, ‘Climb Me And Beat Kakashi!!!!!’ 

It had been bad luck that Chouji was been napping at the cliff base, no fault of his that he didn’t have his genjutsu in place. On their own land it wasn’t required. 

Chouza had to hand it to his brother, he’d maintained control and fended off Gai’s overenthusiastic attacks to veer off into the thicker woods. It could have been worse. 

Chouji could have killed Gai and every law written would have allowed it because he was an unwanted intruder. 

Chouza didn’t sleep well that night. The next morning he impressed upon his border guards punctuality and observation. 

Genma and Ebisu showed up for training. 

Gai did not. 

—

That night Gai came to the front gate with all the proper permissions. He was let in and Chouza was waiting for him on the back pavilion. The stars had only just begun to come out. 

“You missed training today,” Chouza said. 

Gai nodded. “I was working on a new training regimen, Sensei, I’m sorry. I shall do 10,000 situps for it later.” 

“That will do.” Chouza said. He’d long ago learned that cautioning Gai against straining his young body was useless; gentle encouragement and a firm ‘that’s enough’ did the trick. “So. What does your new training regimen look like?” 

Gai was almost sheepish. “I, ah, got carried away without asking some important questions.” 

“Oh?” 

“Sensei are you all as hard as your brother?” 

Chouza blinked. “Pardon?” 

“When I punched him,” Gai mimed the action, “It felt like punching a boulder! One that didn’t break!” 

Chouza nodded. “We are. Diamond-hard skin, Gai. Remember?” He tapped his own forearm. “Very few blades can pierce us. Blows don’t do much either.” 

Gai’s grin became wide and somewhat manic. “Then Sensei I have a favor to ask. Can I train with you?” 

“Gai, we train every weekday.” Chouza said. 

Gai shook his head. “Not that kind of training! I want to try taijutsu against someone who won’t break and Kakashi isn’t always around! If I can beat an oni I can beat Kakashi!” 

Chouza stared at Gai for a moment. 

Then he laughed.

His laughter became loud and joyous. He shook with mirth. Gai blinked, confused. “Sensei?” 

“Sometimes,” Chouza said to himself, “I need to remember that my brother is right.” He looked at Gai. “Let me see what you’ve written up. If I’m not available, there are others- my sister’s son, Makaro. He would be a good partner.” 

Gai offered the grimy paper with a winning smile complete with shining white teeth. Teacher and student had their heads bent over it when dinner was brought. The stars washed out in full before Maito Gai went home with the token that would allow him onto the Akimichi grounds whenever he damn well pleased. 

—

“Sensei,” Tenten asked at the gate as the guard retrieved a token for her, “why do I need one?” She gestured to the old and well-used token Gai carried in his pouch. “Doesn’t yours work fine?” 

“It does,” Gai acknowledged, “but it’s the principle of the thing.” 

“Try not to break the cliffs too bad, Gai,” Akimichi Hachi said as he handed off a new token. “They never quite recovered from your last match with Chouji.” 

Gai nodded. “I will do my best.” 

“Chouji?” Hachi heard Tenten ask as they followed the path through the gate. “Isn’t he a kid?” 

“It’s a long story, Tenten. Not for today.” 

“Aw come on, Sensei-” they turned a corner and were lost in the soft green gloom of the woods. 

Far away, on the pavilion where he had once promised a student special training, Chouza watched his son Chouji and thought about the surreal nature of human beings- those with masks and without, those who charged forward and those who hung back. 

He wondered when Gai would bring Lee as he sometimes brought Tenten, and wondered if he was ready. 

There was no being ready for some things, Chouza supposed. 

You just had to jump.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anime-canon states that Ebisu, Genma,and Gai were on Chouza's genin team during the third ninja war. I took that concept and ran with it.


	23. Wrong Place Wrong Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ino has cut her hair, and Dosu has the ill fortune to be Chouji's opponent in the moments after. A direct sequel to chapter 7, Haircut.

The whole thing was bad from the start but Asuma would only realize that later. 

This was now, and now Chouji had cracked the tile underneath him with hardly an effort and was watching Dosu Kinuta like a wolf watched a sickly deer. 

Dosu watched back. Something had changed from the coward in the forest to now, he was certain of it. Whatever it was seemed intangible, hard to track and harder still to grab. 

“Begin,” the proctor said, and Dosu did. He’d lost a strategic advantage in the forest- his opponent now knew he fought with sound- but what did that matter? Sound couldn’t be easily stopped or guarded against. 

A swing of his arm, air rushing through the gauntlet he wore amplified both by the holes and by his own chakra, produced a concussive burst. His opponent could enlarge his body but the bigger the target the easier it would be for the wave to rush over. A forward punch and- 

and-

and Dosu was flying, his midsection feeling like it had caved in on itself and the gauntlet was making screaming noises as air rushed over it. The impact with the wall was quick and it was brutal. 

_He wasn’t so fast in the forest._

Okay. Time to change strategies. 

Dosu shook the fog from his head and ducked the next punch, which landed in the wall he’d been tossed into and shattered the plaster and the underlying structure. Strong taijutsu, basic ninjutsu? It seemed that way. 

The konoha ninja pulled his hand back as Dosu quickly increased the distance between them, prepping. That much forward force required a multi-pronged attack, which would be easier if this was a team fight. 

Well. No one said this mission would be easy, had they? 

Dosu changed the angle of his arm, thinned his chakra, waited for the inevitable frontal charge. It came, the leaf genin running at him full tilt. 

Moron. 

Dosu slammed his hand down into the tile moments before Chouji would have reached him and the sound waves, following the lines of the floor, pushed up-

-into a log. 

Dosu blinked. He blinked again. 

He felt fingers wrap around his ankle and once again was airborn, this time straight up. A moment later a bo pole was whistling at his face. 

Dosu dodged and the two opponents withdrew again. 

_I underestimated him,_ Dosu acknowledged as the bo pole was neatly spun and brought into a guard position. _It won’t happen again._

Up above, Shikamaru and Ino watched pensively. 

“He seems really upset.” Ino whispered. Shikamaru didn’t respond, looking between their friend and teammate and his opponent with grim concentration. 

The next move was Dosu’s to make and he made it. This time there was no dodging and the soundwave, amplified by the far wall, knocked Chouji over. Dosu lunged in, intent on finishing quickly before his opponent could get up.

Chouji waited. He waited. 

Shikamaru’s eyes got wide. 

“CHOUJI NO!” He barked, but there was no stopping him. When Dosu came close enough Chouji’s hands came up and slithered around his shoulders, pulling the two back-to-front and immobilizing Dosu. The Oto ninja began swearing vibrantly and Chouji began to squeeze. 

A moment later the telltale sound of a shoulder being forcibly popped out of joint was followed by a pained yell. 

Ino made to jump the railing and Shikamaru brought his hands up to form the kagemane seals as both saw, with mounting alarm, a flickering around Chouji’s face, the appearing and disappearing of thin lines beneath the swirls of his cheeks. 

A shadow loomed up over both young ninja. 

“Enough, Chouji.” Asuma said, and Chouji jerked upright and let Dosu go. The Oto nin continued to swear and tried to swing around. 

Chouji kicked him into a wall, and he lay still. 

“Winner-Akimichi Chouji,” Hayate said. The medical ninja jumped into the arena and Asuma put a hand on Chouji’s shoulder. He teleported his young charge to the upper level. 

“What was that?” He murmured, setting aside the bo pole his student had abandoned in his wholehearted attempt to chew Kinuta Dosu's throat out. 

Chouji stared at the floor. 

“You’re not hungry, Chouji.” Asuma said gently. “I know you’re not. And you know your Clan penalties for biting in proctored matches.” 

Chouji crossed his arms and spared a quick glance at his teammates. Down below Dosu was carried out on a stretcher.

“I’m sorry,” Chouji whispered. 

“Do you want to talk about it later?” Asuma asked. Chouji nodded. 

“Okay. We’ll talk about it later. Come on.” Asuma led Chouji back to Ino and Shikamaru, the former who immediately began lambasting her teammate for his slip, the latter who grabbed Chouji’s hand and squeezed tightly. 

Asuma watched Chouji watch his team mates, eyes jumping from Shikamaru’s drawn face to Ino’s newly cropped hair. 

They did talk later, and for the slip Chouji was assigned punishment duty as was proper. 

Asuma found that he couldn’t be too angry. 

After all, the Akimichi protected the Nara and the Yamanaka. 

When you couldn't defeat the pain of a flowering crush cut short in a fight or the stress of a test that might not be passed, biting a throat out seemed downright refreshing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Funny enough by getting his ass handed to him here Dosu might survive the Konoha crush.


	24. Will and Testament

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kurenai has always tried her best to understand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for Major Character Death, discussion of burial plans, disposing of body parts and bodily autonomy, monsters eating corpse bits. All the fun stuff.

Kurenai had always tried to be understanding. 

She was better at it than past lovers, though Asuma never said that out loud. As a ninja whose primary focus was misdirection, Kurenai could appreciate Asuma’s team on a technical level from the beginning. When you started any kind of relationship with a Sarutobi, you entered a relationship with the clan. The Sarutobi had been monster hunters, and then monster teachers. Team Ten had been inevitable, and Asuma being their sensei had been, too. 

Kurenai was good at accepting things as they came, and oh boy did they come. From Shikamaru’s headaches to Ino’s panicked knocking on Kurenai’s window in search of Asuma at four in the morning, Team Ten had just as much drama as Kurenai’s Team Eight- maybe moreso. 

Not that Kurenai ever told Asuma that, and he would argue with her anyway; there was Hinata’s situation to consider, after all. 

When Asuma reworked his will, however, Kuranai found herself hitting a wall. 

“You want to- what?” 

Asuma sucked on the end of the unlit cigarette he kept in his mouth when he was with her. 

“I-” she was at a loss. “Asuma…” 

“I know,” he said, “that it seems strange.” 

“It’s desecration,” Kurenai responded, and felt a tiny pang when she saw the hooded sadness come to Asuma’s gaze. 

“Not to them it’s not, and not to me.” He said. “Kurenai this is important.” 

“This is your body, Asuma!” Kurenai protested. “If you die on a mission who’s to say you’ll even come home in one piece? And even if you don’t, you want me to be okay with this?” 

“I’m not asking you to be okay with it.” Asuma said. “That’s unfair. I’m asking you to accept that I want it to happen.” He tapped the paper on the table forming miles between them. “There’s a precedent and a series of procedures. Any medicnin can do this and they can do it efficiently.” 

“It’s happened before.” Kurenai said. 

“Yes.” Asuma responded. 

“I’m not your wife,” Kurenai said. “I can’t stop you.” 

“They know how important you are to me,” Asuma said. “If you moved to stop it, my Clan would consider your opinion as important as if we were wed, and the team would too.” 

“So if I say no I’m the bad guy.” Kurenai said. 

“No. If you say no, it doesn’t happen. But I want it to.” 

“But why?” Kurenai asked and her dulcet, even tone finally began to show cracks. 

Asuma’s fingers twitched for his lighter but the cigarette remained unlit. “Because it is one of the most important things I can do for them, as their Sensei.” 

Asuma didn’t stay over that night. The will remained on the table, a lazy coiled viper. 

Kurenai had always tried to be understanding, but this was a bridge too far. It remained hovering between them, not ruining their day to day actions- the flowers, the little flirtations, enjoying time with friends and family- but it was always there. 

And then. 

Then. 

When she opened the door and saw Shikamaru’s face, Kurenai knew. 

For a brief moment she was filled with a burning hatred, and then a cold, deadly sorrow. Shikamaru looked so small. She wanted to spare him, wanted to kill him, wanted to scream that he wasn’t allowed in even though he’d been invited long ago when his fangs weren’t so prominent and he was still a funny, lazy genius her lover adored like a son. 

“Asuma is dead.” Shikamaru said, carrying through because it was what Asuma would do, and Kurenai saw parts of Shikamaru crumbling away. 

The Sarutobi clan medics came after, the executor in their wake. There was no need to decide until after the service, they said, because the body could be held until then but a decision has to be made, Miss Kurenai…

They stood at the funeral, Team Asuma, shoulder to shoulder. Shikamaru was in the middle, buffered by Ino on his right and Chouji on his left. Kurenai watched as Ino clung to Shikamaru’s arm, as Shikamaru tightened his grip on Chouji’s sleeve, as Chouji let them both lean their weight on him and bit his lip hard enough to bleed. 

“It was what he wanted.” Kurenai said to the medics, to the executor, to the mortician. 

They came to her before they left, grim and exhausted, having cried all their tears, sworn all their oaths, and eaten their fill of Asuma’s blood and his heart and his hair. 

Kurenai had always tried to understand, but when Shikamaru looked at her and said, “We’re going to kill them,” she really did understand. 

“Be careful.” She said. 

“We will.” Shikamaru said. 

“He said,” Ino began, hesitating, “He said you were-” 

Kurenai nodded. 

Chouji closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Will you let us help you?” He asked. Kurenai knew then that they had always known, maybe had known about the paper and the weight and it had loomed over them as it had loomed over her and was heavier for what it meant, what Asuma had taken from her to give to them. A giving man, Asuma. Until the end. 

“Kill them,” Kurenai said, “and I’ll welcome it.” 

They nodded and gave her a stiff salute. Shikamaru took point and they slipped away on silent ninja feet. Akatsuki did not know what it had brought down when it took Asuma from Konoha and from the Sarutobi and from Kurenai. 

A part of her wished, viciously, that she could be there to see it. 

She closed her door, went to make tea to soothe her stomach, and listened to the rain on the windowpane as her beloved’s monsters ran to war.


End file.
